The Cadence of Vanishing
by burnmedown
Summary: Clay Spenser picks Jameelah Perry up from school, and then both of them disappear without a trace. As hours turn to days, Ray and Naima struggle to cling to their conviction that Clay would never hurt their daughter - and their hope of ever seeing either of them alive again.
1. Let Nothing of You Go

A new idea hit me like a freight train, and I'm also feeling a bit better at the moment, so y'all are getting at least one more multi-chapter fic before 'SEAL Team Week.' This story is probably about halfway written already. I'll try to post every 2-3 days. There will be eight chapters total, plus an epilogue.

I want to clarify right off the bat: this _will not_ include any kind of significant injury to a child. However, there will be quite a lot of fear, speculation and discussion around the general idea of a child potentially being kidnapped and harmed by a close, trusted family friend. I wanted to make sure to warn for those themes up front because I know they are heavy and might be triggering for some.

The story title and all chapter titles come from the poem _Little Sleep's-Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight,_ by Galway Kinnell.

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**1\. Let Nothing of You Go**

Ray Perry knows he's lucky.

The fall that gave him bruised ribs and a nasty concussion could easily have broken his neck instead - and if his boys hadn't made it to him so quickly afterward, he would have had too many bullet holes to worry about little things like head injuries or sore ribs.

Knowing that on an intellectual level doesn't make the recovery process any more fun or less frustrating, though. Thanks to the persistent dizzy spells, Ray isn't allowed to try driving for at least another week, which means he can't even pick up his own daughter from school on days when Naima is at work.

Normally Naima's mother picks up Jameelah when Naima is working and Ray is spun up or otherwise unavailable, but she has gone to spend some time with her terminally ill brother in Nashville. This becomes an issue for the first time on the Friday before Mother's Day, when Naima unexpectedly gets called in to cover an extra shift for one of her coworkers who's out sick.

Ray and Naima long since added his teammates to Jameelah's school's list of trusted people who are allowed to pick her up. Jason is unavailable. Next on the list is Spenser, who agrees with a level of enthusiasm that makes Ray narrow his eyes suspiciously.

"Do _not_ stop and get her ice cream on the way home," he says.

"I won't," Clay promises.

"Or a popsicle."

"Copy."

"Or anything else that contains sugar."

"Roger that."

"Or caffeine," Ray adds.

"Or caffeine," Clay agrees solemnly.

"Or-"

Spenser laughs. "How about I just promise not to buy her _any_ food?"

There are clear loopholes there that Ray doesn't trust. "Or candy. Or drinks."

"No sugar or caffeine," Clay says. "No noise-making toys. No ponies. No crystal meth. I _know,_ man. Naima already gave me this lecture, and no offense, but it was way scarier when she did it."

Ray rolls his eyes, but lets it go at that.

He honestly kind of feels like shit. His ribs throb, and as the day wears on, he develops a pounding headache. He feels exhausted by noon, and it's nearly 1500 by the time he finally manages to persuade RJ to take a nap by lying down with him.

Of course that ends with Ray falling asleep as well.

He jolts awake, groggy and confused, an unknown time later. The room is so dark that for a disoriented moment Ray thinks he has slept past sunset. Finally, his addled brain registers the roar of rain on the roof, followed by a great crack of thunder that makes RJ startle in his sleep.

Well, that explains the dim lighting. Now that he thinks about it, Ray vaguely remembers hearing that it was supposed to rain later today.

Leaving RJ sleeping - like his sister, the little man can sleep through a tornado once he's finally out - Ray fumbles around until he finds his phone where he left it sitting atop RJ's dresser. A glance at the screen makes him groan as he quietly leaves the room, easing the door shut behind him.

Jameelah has been out of school for more than an hour and a half. Clay must have stayed and kept her quiet so Ray could sleep. It isn't really fair to Spenser that the school pickup unexpectedly turned into babysitting, but honestly, Ray is grateful. He feels much better now than he did before the unplanned nap.

Ray makes it halfway down the hallway toward the living room before he stops, gripped by a sudden, strange sense of unease.

The house is dark. There isn't a single light turned on.

And beneath the steady drumming of rain on the roof, Ray hears nothing but silence.

It finally occurs to him to scroll through all the notifications on his phone, and there it is: a text from Clay.

_Taking J to get a gift for Naima. Shouldn't be long._

The text was sent 80 minutes ago, not long after Jameelah would have gotten out of school. There are no other texts from Spenser. No missed calls either.

Telling himself not to jump to conclusions, Ray does a sweep of the entire house just to confirm that Clay and Jameelah aren't hiding, playing some kind of ill-advised prank on him. They aren't.

Next, he checks the yard to make sure that Spenser hasn't taken his daughter out to play in the downpour - because honestly, he wouldn't put it past Clay. But there's no sign of them there either.

What the hell did Clay do? Take Jameelah to Chuck E. Cheese to wait out the storm, and forget to let her parents know about it?

More than a little annoyed, Ray calls Spenser's phone. It goes right to voicemail. He immediately calls back, and the same thing happens. Tries a text instead. Doesn't get a response.

Ray feels like there's a weight on his chest now. He breathes past it, past the pain of his injured ribs. Tells himself to stay calm. There's an explanation for this. Has to be.

He calls his other teammates. None of them have heard from Clay since yesterday. None have any idea where he could be.

Between those calls, Ray keeps trying Clay's phone again and again, with the same result each time: straight to voicemail.

_Come on, Spenser. Turn on your damn phone. Please. Oh God please._

Ray's mind is running away from him, imagining Clay's truck in a ditch somewhere, or wrapped around a tree.

Imagining the two of them trapped inside, unconscious, maybe severely injured, for more than a _fucking hour_ with no one looking for them, because Ray was asleep and didn't realize they were even missing.

He locks down the panic and regret, refusing to let himself dwell. If there's one thing his job has given him, it's the ability to move forward as long as there's still a job to do. To focus on the things he can still change, rather than the mistakes of the past.

His job now is to fix this. To find his baby girl, and his friend, and get them home.

Ray calls Naima and leaves her a message.

Then he calls the police.

The next few hours go by in a blur. The storm passes. The police arrive. Naima comes home as soon as she gets Ray's message. Jason and Sonny show up and take over entertaining RJ to keep him out of the way.

Stupidly, Ray keeps glancing over at the door, like he expects Spenser to just stroll in with Jameelah in tow, wearing a sheepish grin and offering some dumb excuse.

It never happens.

There's no sign of Clay's truck anywhere on the route between Jameelah's school and the Perry home, or anywhere else in town. No one matching his or Jameelah's description has been admitted to any local hospital. Clay's phone remains either off or out of service, meaning the police aren't able to track it.

It isn't until almost 2000 that evening that the investigation finally digs up an image of Spenser's truck that got captured on a traffic camera about 25 minutes after Jameelah got out of school.

Like pretty much everything else about this situation, it doesn't make any sense, because the photo was taken at the last traffic light on the edge of town. Past that point, there's really just woods and wildlife management areas.

Clay's text said he was taking Jameelah to pick up a gift for Naima, but there are no stores out that direction. There's not much of anything. Ray can't come up with any logical reason why Spenser would have been headed out there.

The photograph was taken from the back, capturing the rear license plate of Clay's truck. It's blurry and out of focus, but Ray can just see through the rear window well enough to make out the two heads: Spenser driving, and Jameelah's dark hair on the passenger side in the back, barely visible over the top of the seat.

Ray stares at them and forgets how to breathe. His fingers shake as he ghosts them over the fuzzy image of his daughter's head, her hair still neatly pulled back in the French braid Naima put it in just this morning.

_Where are you, baby? How do we find you?_

It's after the photo surfaces that the detective who currently seems to be in charge of this investigation, a woman who introduced herself as Detective Deina Pérez, starts asking Ray and Naima a _lot_ of questions. Nearly all of them seem to be centered around Clay.

How long have they known him?

Has he spent a lot of time with Jameelah? Bought her gifts? Showed her any sort of special attention?

Did they ask him to pick her up from school, or did he offer to?

Does he have access to any other vehicles, or only the truck?

Do they know of anywhere he might go (besides his apartment, which of course has already been checked and cleared)?

Who else is he close to? Girlfriend? Family?

"What is the point of all these questions?" Ray asks finally, unable to keep the exhausted, frayed frustration out of his voice.

"Mr. Perry." Pérez's voice is soft and sympathetic in a way that sets Ray's teeth on edge. She's talking to him like... like he's a _victim._ "Clay Spenser is our primary person of interest in this case right now. We're trying to learn everything we can about him. Every little piece of information that might help us bring your daughter home safely."

At first it doesn't even register. Ray just blinks at her, his head aching, mind utterly blank.

In that same gentle tone, Pérez continues, "When an adult family friend disappears along with a 9-year-old child under circumstances like these, unfortunately there are some questions that have to be asked."

It finally hits Ray with the force of a mortar to the chest. Gut twisting with nausea, he exhales sharply. "_No,"_ he says. "No, Clay isn't just a family friend. He's..."

The words trail away, because though Detective Pérez is listening patiently, Ray sees in her eyes what she's thinking.

She's thinking that she's heard this before. So many times.

_He wouldn't._

_Not him._

_My friend would never hurt my child._

She's heard it from parents whose friends hurt their children.

"Excuse me," Ray says in a choked whisper.

Wobbling and dizzy, he stands up, finds his way to the bathroom, and then throws up until his head throbs and tears and snot stream down his face.


	2. The Permanence of Smoke or Stars

**2\. The Permanence of Smoke or Stars**

Ray's message barely even makes any sense to Naima. Jameelah missing? She can't be missing. They had Clay pick her up, and if there's anywhere in the world that their daughter should be completely safe, it's with one of Ray's teammates. This has to be some sort of silly misunderstanding that will probably be resolved before Naima can even make it back to the house.

Her supervisor tells her to go home. One of her coworkers offers to drive her. Naima thanks the woman but politely refuses, saying she's fine.

And she is, more or less. Right up until she turns onto her street and sees the police cars in front of her house.

That makes it real, and suddenly she can't breathe. Her hands freeze on the steering wheel. It takes every bit of her strength and focus just to park, get out of the car, walk down the sidewalk to the front door.

Inside the house, the first thing Naima does is reflexively seek out her husband.

She isn't sure she's ever seen Ray like this before.

He looks... _small,_ hunched in on himself, his eyes glazed and distant. She's seen him badly injured and in pain, lost, uncertain, doubting himself and his country and his faith, but never. Never quite like this.

Feeling like she's moving through deep water, Naima sits next to him. She lifts her son into her lap. On autopilot, she acknowledges introductions, answers basic questions - how tall is Jameelah; how much does she weigh; what was she wearing today - and listens to the detective explain what their first steps are going to be.

The entire time, part of Naima keeps thinking this is all just a mistake. That her daughter will come running into the room at any moment, all smiles and sunshine, ready for her after-school hug.

Instead, the hours stretch on, and the police find nothing.

And when they finally do find something, it makes things worse instead of better. The traffic camera image of Clay's truck shows that he inexplicably left town. Without letting anyone know where he was going.

That's the moment when the police truly decide to view Clay as a suspect rather than a potential victim.

Ray, hurting and concussed and confused, doesn't even pick up on it right away. Naima does. Pain stabs like a knife into the center of her abdomen, just below her rib cage. Her lips and tongue go numb. Somehow she manages to keep talking anyway, answering the questions, while her brain recites a constant background mantra of, _No. They're wrong. They have to be wrong._

But why would Clay leave with Jameelah? Where would he be going?

When Ray finally clues in, the realization hits him like a wrecking ball. He staggers to his feet with a whispered excuse and heads in the direction of the bathroom.

Naima excuses herself as well, waits out in the hall until he's done throwing up, and then eases the door open and steps inside. Ray is slumped over, head leaned against the wall, staring blankly.

She lowers herself to the floor, pulls Ray's sweaty, shaking form into her arms, and just sits with him. He's breathing like he still wants to gag, but just doesn't have the energy anymore.

"They're wrong," he whispers after a few minutes, his voice raw and hoarse. "He wouldn't. He wouldn't."

"I know," Naima tells him. It's all she can think of to say.

She wants it to be true.

From there, Naima's world seems to break into fragments, crystal-sharp shards of horrible, wrenching clarity amidst a hazy blur of barely remembered mundanity.

A lot of people come in and out, asking questions and following up leads that never go anywhere. Some of them are probably NCIS, but Naima doesn't really care to know the difference; they all blend together into an amalgam of faceless officers and/or agents who haven't brought her baby girl home to her.

There's the moment when the police (or NCIS or whoever) inform Ray and Naima about the search teams. The heavy rainfall probably lessened their chances of successful scent tracking, but just in case, there are teams of volunteers with search dogs scouring the wildlife management area out in the direction where Clay's truck appeared to have been headed.

Naima realizes, with a jolt of the worst pure pain she has ever felt, that those teams likely believe they're looking for a body.

There's the moment when she turns on the news and sees a photograph of Jameelah's sweet gap-toothed smile, next to an image of Clay.

The powers that be are keeping Clay's Tier One status, and even the fact that he's a SEAL at all, as quiet as they can; thus far all that's been released is the fact that he's Navy and is a 'person of interest' - not suspect, at least not officially - in connection with the disappearance of a child.

In the photo they've chosen, Clay is solemn, staring straight at the camera. His eyes are wide and so blue that they almost seem eerie.

If she were looking at this as an outsider, as someone with no knowledge of the situation, she knows what she'd see in those uncanny eyes and that expressionless face. She would find evil there.

But this is _Clay._ His face in her memory is the furthest thing from blank; it's crinkled with laughter, drawn with grief and pain, bright with passion and purpose. She knows exactly who he is. Right?

He's her friend. Her husband's teammate, a man Ray trusts to have his back, a man who more than once has saved Ray's life at the risk of his own. He's their _family._ Naima would have staked her life on the simple bedrock belief that she could trust Clay Spenser.

In fact, she did something much deeper and more meaningful than that: she staked her child's life on it.

What if she was wrong?

Even just thinking about the possibility makes Naima feel so sick and scared that she doesn't know how to live inside her own head anymore. She wants to be someone else, just so she can have five minutes away from the drowning terror and the intrusive thoughts of her happy, innocent baby girl being hurt by someone she trusts. Someone she _loves._

While Clay doesn't often talk about his childhood, Naima is well aware that it was... not ideal. She has always thought that he goes a bit overboard with children he cares about, buying them too many gifts and playing with them for hours after anyone else would have run out of patience, as a way to try to make up for all the things he didn't have when he was a kid.

Now she can't help but wonder, was it ever really that at all? The way Clay interacted with her children always gave her a bittersweet feeling: fondness, mixed with sadness that anyone could have neglected and abandoned the sweet, earnest little boy Clay must once have been. Is it even possible that she could have misread his motivations so completely as to miss the evil she'd brought into her own home?

She can't stop herself from flipping back through memories, obsessing over every time she watched Clay patiently sit cross-legged at Jameelah's tea parties, play trucks and dolls with RJ, draw sidewalk chalk outlines for both children to color in. It feels poisoned now. All of it.

Even looking back at those memories through the lens of her current terror and grief, she still can't recall ever seeing anything that might have served as a warning. Nothing off with Clay's face, his body language, his behavior.

Maybe she really has just been completely blind all along.

If so, she knows she'll never be able to forgive herself.

Completely lost inside her own head, Naima doesn't even realize the news report is still going until she hears Ray make a sound like he's been kicked in the solar plexus. Quickly, she grabs the remote and turns off the TV while her husband collapses on the couch beside her, arm wrapped protectively around his injured ribs.

"What if it _was_ him?" Ray's voice is barely audible.

Naima is shaking her head before he can even finish the sentence. "We can't think like that," she says, even though she has already been thinking like that.

Ray doesn't seem to even hear her. "All those serial killers who've had people that knew and loved them for _decades_, shared their homes and their beds, and never saw the darkness they were hiding. What if this is- what if-" He's breathing in rusty gasps now, his entire body shaking.

The weight on Naima's own chest is crushing, pain that feels like it will splinter her sternum, but she fights through it. She has a feeling they'll have to take turns being the brave one, and right now Ray is hurting so much that he needs it to be her. She cups his face in her hands and tells him, "Breathe, baby. Breathe with me. Don't go there. Just breathe."

Gradually, Ray calms a bit, leaning forward to press his forehead against hers. Finally he gets himself together enough to say in a halting voice, "The teams, what we go through out there together... You see their souls, Naima. Who they really are when everything else is stripped away."

For a minute there's silence, both of them just breathing, holding each other. Naima guesses that Ray is mentally running back through his and Clay's missions and deployments together. All those moments when their backs were against the wall and he saw who Clay truly was with everything else stripped away.

"I never..." Ray falters. "I couldn't be that wrong about him. Not after everything we've been through together. Could I?"

Dry-mouthed, Naima tries to swallow. She doesn't know the right answer. Doesn't know what she even believes anymore.

Could they have both been so wrong?

They wouldn't be the first. Some monsters are horrifyingly good at hiding in plain sight.

She raises her gaze back to her husband's, and she makes a choice to try to cling for as long as she can to the tiny, fragile spark of faith still burning in her chest.

"I don't know. Not for sure. But I don't think so."

Ray nods, some of the tension bleeding out of him, replaced by pure exhaustion.

Even if they could fully convince themselves of Clay's innocence (which Naima knows neither of them can), it still wouldn't leave them in a much better place than where they are now... because if Clay didn't take Jameelah, then something must have happened to both of them. Something that made their daughter not be safe even in the care of a Tier One operator.

Trying not to drown in their own fears, the two of them sit for a while, curled together, just drawing strength from each other. It's what they've always done during the hard times.

This is by far the hardest. Every other difficulty they've endured pales by comparison. Naima doesn't know how she can possibly go another moment without shattering into a million pieces, but she takes breath after breath and finds herself still here. In her house. In this dizzying nightmare that has become her reality.

On day three, Naima goes into Jameelah's room and looks at the messily made bed, sheets crumpled up a bit beneath one corner of the comforter. She looks at the neat row of dresses hanging in the closet. She sits down next to the little pile of worn clothing that didn't quite make it into the hamper, and she breathes in the fading smell of her daughter, and _breaks._

Ray finds her there, sobbing so hard she can't breathe, and it's his turn to be the brave one.

Even though SAR isn't typically Cerberus's niche, Brock takes his dog out and joins the search anyway. When he finally comes back, he's hollow-eyed and exhausted, and his voice breaks when he apologizes for finding nothing.

The other members of Bravo mostly stay close to the Perry home. Naima can tell from their expressions and body language every time Clay's status as a suspect is mentioned that they don't for a second believe he's responsible, but they don't really talk about it, at least not within her hearing. In fact, they don't say all that much in general. They're just _there._

They bring food, wash dishes, sweep floors. Keep RJ entertained, and mostly distracted from his heart-wrenching searches for his big sister. At Naima's request, Jason removes all the alcohol from the house while Ray isn't paying attention. Trent and Sonny offer to take RJ to the park, but quickly back off that idea when Naima nearly has a panic attack at the thought of her son being out of her sight.

Ray and Naima's loved ones circle the wagons, providing quiet, steady support for the four worst days of Naima's life.

Then, just before 9:00 AM on day five, their home phone receives a call from an unknown number.

It takes a couple agonizing rings for the police to get everything ready, and then Detective Pérez gives Ray a nod and he answers, putting the call on speaker.

"This is Ray Perry," he says, somehow managing to sound almost calm.

For an instant there's nothing but silence on the other end, and Naima's heart sinks, thinking it's just a sales call.

But then-

A small, unsteady voice she would know anywhere whispers, _"Daddy?"_


	3. The Other Side of the Darkness

I'm spoiling y'all a bit with an early update and a long chapter, but the next update after this one could take a few extra days. I have a significant portion of chapters 5-9 written already, but not much of chapter 4 yet, so it's possible I might not get it posted until early next week.

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**3\. The Other Side of the Darkness**

Jameelah's face lights up when she sees him. God, Clay cannot imagine that reaction _ever_ getting old.

"Uncle Claaaaay!" Throwing her backpack strap over one shoulder, Jameelah makes a beeline for him, arms raised. He picks her up and spins her around a couple times, then catches sight of one of her teachers watching them with an inscrutable expression.

Quickly, Clay sets Jameelah down and tries to arrange his face into an expression befitting a responsible, grown-ass adult who can definitely be trusted with a child.

He shows his ID, waits for the teacher to check his license plate number against the 'authorized persons' list, and then they're off.

"Uncle Clay, can we get the flowers now?" Jameelah asks from the back, where she's perched in the booster seat that positions her seatbelt just right. "Please? It's about to be Mother's Day, and you said you'd teach me how to braid them!"

Huh. Mother's Day already. It always catches him a little off guard.

He keeps thinking someday he'll reach a point where the occasion won't bother him anymore, and it probably isn't quite as bad as it used to be, but that little hitch of pain in his chest just keeps coming back, year after year.

He first learned to make daisy chains for his mom back when he was just a little guy, maybe 5 or 6 years old, still naive enough to think he could fix everything if he just loved his mama enough. Just gave her enough gifts, enough hugs, enough solemn promises to be good.

Even after that, though, after his world collapsed around him and he realized his mom was never going to get better, he didn't stop making the braids of leaves and flowers, because the younger kids at the orphanage in Liberia had loved them. He wove a lot of crowns back then. Those little boys and girls who had nothing deserved to feel like kings and queens for a day.

It's been a long time now - his life as a Tier One operator doesn't exactly furnish him with a lot of opportunities to make flower crowns - but he's pretty sure he still remembers how.

Maybe this will be good for him. Give him a chance to replace some of those negative early memories with this instead: a sweet, exuberant, well-adjusted little girl making something pretty for her mother, not out of fear or desperation, but just because she loves her.

"Sure, kiddo." He grins at the resulting enthusiastic cheer. "Do you want to get the flowers from a store, or would you rather pick wildflowers?"

"Wildflowers!" She says excitedly.

It's been a good spring for them; nearly every open field is alive with color. Clay isn't sure they're technically supposed to be picking the wildflowers, but he figures a few handfuls won't hurt anything. Just enough for Jameelah to use in creating the Mother's Day project that she's been excited about for weeks.

Jameelah can't decide whether she should make a crown or a heart. Clay offered to help with whichever she chooses, but he secretly hopes she picks the former, because the thought of fierce, fearless, no-nonsense Naima Perry proudly wearing a flower crown makes him smile.

They might need to head out of town a bit to find a good place to pick flowers without any passersby getting pissed at them, so he shoots Ray a quick text to give him a heads-up about the errand.

When he sees a promising spot, Clay pulls off onto a gravel road and parks just off the edge of it, almost but not quite out of sight of the highway.

He isn't sure whether they're actually in the wildlife management area or just near the edge of it, but the field full of flowers doesn't appear to be fenced and he doesn't see any No Trespassing signs, so he figures they're probably good.

Before getting out, Clay grabs his phone, intending to send Ray a follow-up text with more information about exactly where they are and what they're doing.

No signal. Great.

With a sigh, he shoves the phone into his back pocket and rounds the truck to let Jameelah out.

"What do you think, Jammie? Daisies? Black-eyed Susans?" Clay turns to see that Jameelah is staring across the field toward the trees at the far edge. Following her gaze, Clay spots what has caught her attention: a distant tangle of bright pink and yellow honeysuckle.

"Good eye. That what you want?"

Jameelah nods, her brown eyes sparkling.

Clay has never braided honeysuckle before, but he figures the vines should be easy enough to work with.

Hand in hand, they cross the field. Though the sky is still blue overhead, thunder rumbles distantly, heralding a coming storm. That plus the lack of phone signal makes Clay feel faintly uneasy; they need to get this done and get back to town before Ray starts worrying.

Jameelah isn't tall enough to reach most of the blooming honeysuckle, but she is more than happy to supervise Clay while he picks the flowers for her.

He is stretching up to reach a particularly vibrant sprig of pink blossoms, paying woefully little attention to his surroundings, when the boy yells at them from just the other side of the brush.

"What the fuck are y'all doin'?"

Clay's instinctive reaction to the hostile raised voice is to reach for his sidearm, only to realize he doesn't have one.

Hands out, he moves slowly back and to the side, shifting himself toward Jameelah, who has gone very still. This also gives him an angle to see the angry-looking teenager staring out at them from behind the screen of tangled honeysuckle and wild shrubs.

The kid is pointing a rifle at them. His finger is on the trigger.

Clay's heart stutters for an instant, and then everything snaps into clear, bright focus, despite the gloom cast by the oncoming storm.

Hands up non-threateningly, he carefully steps in front of Jameelah so that she is fully shielded by his body. Then he says evenly, "Hey, man, no need for that. We didn't mean to trespass. We'll get out of your hair, okay?"

"What are y'all doing up here? You snooping around?" The kid still sounds angry, but more than a little scared too. His eyes dart from Clay's face to his raised hands, and he wavers a little, the barrel of the gun dropping briefly before jerking back up with a dangerous jolt that freezes Clay's breath in his lungs.

This jumpy dumbass needs to get his finger off that trigger, or he's gonna shoot somebody whether he means to or not.

"We didn't know this was private property," Clay continues in that same soothing, non-confrontational tone. "We just came up here to pick some wildflowers for Mother's Day. We can leave, right now."

_Please, kid. Please just calm the hell down and let us walk away._

Reaching carefully behind him to touch Jameelah's shoulder, Clay takes a single slow step back, moving her with him.

There's a bright flash and an earsplitting crack of thunder, so abrupt that it startles them all.

The roar of sound swallows up the shot. Clay never even hears it.

He turns his stagger into a spin, scoops up Jameelah, and breaks for a dark patch of trees jutting out into the edge of the field. Behind them, the kid yells, then fires a single shot that goes wild; Clay doesn't even slow down, not until well after they've been swallowed up by the gloom of the wind-tossed woods.

A stumble finally forces him to stop, brace himself against a tree, and lean down to set Jameelah on her feet.

She's trembling, staring up at him with wide, scared eyes. Her gaze reminds Clay far too much of the too-old wartime eyes he has seen on children in a dozen different combat zones. He'd have given nearly anything, from the moment he met Jameelah Perry, to never see those eyes staring out of her sweet face.

The front of her shirt is soaked with blood.

Even knowing where it probably came from, the sight causes a muted spike of panic, and Clay quickly checks Jameelah over to make sure she isn't injured. She looks down at herself, then back at him, her mouth a round _O_ of horror.

"Uncle Clay, you're hurt."

"It's okay, sweetie. I'll be fine." He takes her hand. "We need to keep moving, okay? We need to get back to the truck."

He quickly checks his phone, because a little backup would be really damn nice right now, but there's still no signal. Of fucking course there's not.

Clay means to circle around the field, come out of the trees near where he parked, and then haul ass out of here. That plan goes out the window as soon as they get close enough to spot the truck through a thin break in the foliage.

The idiot kid who shot him apparently isn't working alone. Some other asshole, also armed, has broken the window and currently appears to be trying to hot-wire the vehicle.

Goddammit. There goes their transportation.

Well, time for plan B. They retreat back into the woods just as the first fat drops of rain start to patter onto the leaves overhead. Within seconds, the rainfall becomes a downpour.

While they move, Clay tries to figure out the exact location of his wound so he can put pressure on it with his free hand, but it's kind of a mess. He thinks he might be bleeding from more than one place, like maybe the bullet struck bone and deflected back out or something, and the rain keeps streaming into his eyes and washing away the blood and just generally making everything more difficult.

Also, pressing down even lightly results in the kind of grating, skin-crawling, nauseating pain that makes him suspect something is probably broken in there. Makes trying to stop the bleeding even _more_ enjoyable.

But he's still on his feet. That's good, right? And the rain should make it harder for the tangos to track them with-

No. Not tangos. They're stateside, not in the field. He's starting to drift. Losing focus.

Jameelah's small fingers, clenched around Clay's, haven't stopped shaking. "Uncle Clay," she says, her voice barely audible over the storm, "are you okay?"

Blinking away the rainwater running down from his soaked hair, Clay manages to aim a smile in her general direction. His foot snags a root and he stumbles, catching himself with only a hitched breath. "I'm fine, Jammie."

She gives him a skeptical, overly perceptive look that somehow crawled right off her father's face and onto hers. Most of the time Clay thinks Jameelah looks a bit more like Naima, but sometimes she makes expressions that are all Ray.

She may be only 9 years old, but she isn't stupid. She knows the amount of blood on her shirt is not a good sign. Must have felt how quickly it soaked through the fabric when Clay picked her up and ran into the trees, too high on adrenaline to feel more than a dull, heavy ache in his chest. And though he has tried to hide it, he's pretty sure she knows he's still bleeding.

That dull, heavy ache has long since turned into a decent approximation of the fires of hell, and Clay's legs feel dead, his feet dragging. He's struggling to get enough air, and with the rain leaching the warmth from his body, he has started shivering.

He'll be fine, of course. He can keep going. He wouldn't be a Tier One operator if he couldn't withstand a little, insignificant... bullet to the chest. With serious blood loss and possible internal damage.

"Uncle Clay?" This time Jameelah's voice is as shaky as her fingers. Clay realizes then that he tripped again, and possibly didn't manage to stay silent this time.

"Fine," he manages. "'M fine, kiddo."

They have to keep going. He has to keep Jameelah safe.

He _will._

They'll parallel the road until they find either phone service or a house not occupied by trigger-happy psychopaths, whichever comes first, and then they'll call 911 and Jameelah's parents, and everything will be just-

His feet go out from under him in the slick mud, and he falls.

Clay manages to twist, hitting the ground on his shoulder and back rather than his chest. The world whites out for a few seconds. He comes back to the sound of Jameelah's terrified voice whispering close to his ear, "Please wake up. Please wake up."

He coughs and spits out a mouthful of rainwater, scrubbing his palm over his face. "I'm awake," he says, the sounds slurring at the edges.

Jameelah squeezes Clay's hand hard. Her face tries to crumple, but she visibly steels herself, swiping stray strands of wet hair out of her eyes. "You have to get up," she tells him, in a no-nonsense tone that sounds very much like Naima. "We need to keep going, remember?"

He tries. He gives it his absolute goddamn best.

It's not happening.

He has burned through all the strength he had left, and also through far too much of the blood in his body.

With numb, clumsy fingers, Clay digs out his phone and checks the screen one last time, already knowing what he'll see.

No signal.

Then he presses the phone into Jameelah's hand and curls her fingers around it.

"You need to go, okay? Stay within sight of the road, but don't come out of the trees unless you see a house. If the phone starts getting a signal, call 911 right away."

Giving those instructions is one of the hardest things Clay has ever done. It goes against every instinct he has, sending her away, alone, with night not far off.

But he can't protect her anymore. This is the only chance he can come up with.

Jameelah stares at him, and then, finally, she starts crying.

"No. Uncle Clay, _no."_ She drops the phone and lunges down to throw her arms around his neck. He chokes back a yelp and tries to gently push her away, but she clings like a barnacle, sobbing right in his ear.

"Kiddo, you have to-"

"_NO!"_ She wails.

The rain has slowed to a gentle drip, and now all Clay feels is the warmth of Jameelah's tears on his neck.

He makes one last unsuccessful attempt to get her to leave... and then it's too late anyway.

The kid emerges from the trees, calling back over his shoulder, "Mama, I found them!"

Jameelah bolts up, startled, and Clay musters just enough strength to push her behind him. Arms shaking, he tries desperately to push himself up, to roll over and get his knees and elbows under him, to _fight._

A boot on his abdomen holds him down. He struggles, ignoring the sawing agony in his chest and the warm trickle of blood down his side, but there's no strength left. There's nothing. He has failed at the only thing that matters.

Tears burning his eyes, Clay looks up at the tall, stone-faced woman pinning him to the ground and pointing a gun at his face, and he uses the only tactic he has left: words.

"Please. Please don't hurt her." His voice is weak, only just loud enough to be audible, and it breaks on a gagging cough as he fights for air. "She's just a kid. Please just let her go. Jesus, _please."_

That cocky Green Team kid who snarked his way through SERE could never have imagined begging like this, but it's _Jameelah._ It's Jameelah's life. Clay would die licking this woman's boots if he thought it might help save Ray's daughter. He'd do _anything._

There's nothing he can do. It's probably the most helpless he's ever felt in his whole damn life.

The world keeps trying to slide away from him, turning liquid and indistinct, colors bleeding into each other like a Monet painting. He fights it, staring up through tears, sucking in a weak breath for one last whisper of "_Please"_ that comes out sounding more like a sob.

"Hey!" He doesn't realize he's drifted out until he hears the woman sharply trying to get his attention. Her face fades back into focus, closer now, the rifle resting across her knees as she squats at his side. "I'm not gonna hurt the kid, okay? She's fine. Stay awake."

He doesn't trust her word - doesn't have any reason to - but it's getting harder and harder to hang onto consciousness. Faintly, he hears Jameelah's frightened voice calling his name. Hears the woman snarling at someone, _Do you have any goddamn idea what you've done?_

Then she presses down hard on his chest, and the shattering pain swallows him whole.


	4. Tell the Sun, Don't Go Down

Sorry for the delay. This ended up a lot longer than expected.

* * *

**4\. Tell the Sun, Don't Go Down**

When Jameelah sees how much Uncle Clay is bleeding, she suddenly feels like she can't breathe. Her ears fill up with a sound like a distant phone ringing. It goes on and on, making it hard to think.

This is all her fault.

If she hadn't wanted the flowers, none of this would ever have happened.

Or if she had just chosen to go to a store instead, or picked daisies instead of the honeysuckle. They only went over to the trees because those were the flowers she wanted. Uncle Clay got shot because of that.

Why couldn't she have just gotten the daisies? Those would have been fine. Her mom would have liked them.

Uncle Clay being hurt like this would upset her no matter what. She was sad last time too, when his leg got blown up at work and he was in the hospital for a really long time and she almost never got to see him, and he didn't seem to want to talk to her much even when she did visit.

But him being hurt because of her? It feels so much worse.

They keep going through the woods for as long as they can, looking for someone who will help, and Uncle Clay just keeps getting worse and worse. He starts stumbling a lot and making little noises that sound kind of like Cerberus when he's sad that no one will play with him.

Finally, Uncle Clay falls down and just lies there in the mud with his eyes closed.

Jameelah has never felt so afraid in her entire life.

She thinks maybe he will never wake up again.

He does wake up, but it doesn't make her feel better for very long, because then he tries to give her his phone and convince her to go on without him, and Jameelah realizes it's possible to get even more scared.

She's afraid for herself, because she doesn't want to go into the dark woods alone, in the storm, with bad people out there somewhere looking for them.

But she's maybe even more worried about Uncle Clay. He's hurt so bad he can't even stand up, and if she just _leaves_ him here, who will help him? He'll be all alone.

That's when Jameelah finally starts crying. She has tried so hard to be brave but she's _so scared_ and doesn't know what to do. She ends up just clinging to Uncle Clay, because it feels like maybe everything will be okay if she just doesn't ever let go of him.

But then the bad people find them, and Jameelah realizes she should have gone for help like Uncle Clay told her to.

And now it's too late.

There are two of them: a tall, angry-looking lady, and the boy who yelled at them and shot Uncle Clay. Both of them have guns.

When Uncle Clay sees them, he pushes Jameelah back and tries to get up, but the woman pins him down with her foot to make sure that he can't.

"Don't! Leave him alone!" Jameelah tries to yell, but the words come out quiet and small. No one even looks at her. It's like they can't hear her; like she doesn't have a voice at all.

For as long as he can talk, Uncle Clay keeps begging them not to hurt her.

Then he goes quiet, and his head falls back, and Jameelah feels like an elephant has sat down right on the middle of her chest.

Even the angry lady seems worried. She crouches down next to Uncle Clay and tries to get him to wake up. Then she pushes down on his chest, right where he's hurt, and he goes stiff and makes a noise Jameelah will never be able to forget, not even if she lives to be 100.

"Stop it! Stop!" She's mad now, almost more mad than scared, and it gives her the strength to yell loud enough that they finally look at her. She tries to rush forward, to _make_ the lady stop hurting Uncle Clay, but the boy grabs her and holds her back.

"Calm down," he tells Jameelah, which just makes her feel twice as angry. "She's trying to help him."

"He's only hurt because you _shot him!"_ Jameelah snarls at the boy. She hates him. She hates him so much.

"I didn't mean to," the boy mutters. He sounds pouty, like he thinks it's unfair for her to be so mad about it.

She tries to bite him. He yelps and jumps back and says a bad word.

"Leave the girl alone," the boy's mom snaps at him. She's still pressing down on Uncle Clay's chest, but he is very still and quiet now. Jameelah's eyes fill with tears. She covers her mouth with her hands.

The woman looks up. "He's still alive," she says quickly. "Come see for yourself. It's okay."

Slowly, trying to choke back the sobs that want to climb up her throat, Jameelah walks over to them. The rain has stopped, but the sky is still cloudy and it's almost sunset now. Beneath the trees, there's just enough light for her to see how horribly pale Uncle Clay's face is. He's always pretty white, but right now he looks less like a white person and more like a white piece of paper.

"He's breathing," the lady says. "See?"

Jameelah watches. Uncle Clay's chest goes up, then down.

So he isn't dead, yet. But that doesn't mean he's okay either.

"I'm trying to get the bleeding under control," the woman explains, keeping her bloody hands pressed down over the spot where the bullet went in.

"You should call an ambulance," Jameelah says. She's old enough to know that that's what you're supposed to do when someone is hurt really bad.

The lady quickly looks down. In a strange voice, she says, "Can't do that just yet."

Jameelah is all geared up to argue, but before she gets a chance, the woman orders her son to go find something they can use to move Uncle Clay. "And get rid of that," she adds, tipping her head toward Uncle Clay's phone, which is still lying in the mud where Jameelah dropped it.

That's when Jameelah realizes there isn't going to be any ambulance, no matter how much she argues.

The lady must be getting rid of Uncle Clay's phone so that they can't call for help, and so that no one can find them out here. Not the police or the paramedics or anybody.

Jameelah wants her dad, because he would know what to do. He would be strong enough to fight these people. He wouldn't even be scared of the guns.

She wants her mom, because her mom is a nurse and would know how to save Uncle Clay and make him better. And she wouldn't be scared either. She would probably take away the lady's gun and hit her with it.

She wants them to come rescue Uncle Clay, and hug her and never let go, and make her feel safe again.

But she doesn't have them right now. All she has is herself.

If someone is going to save Uncle Clay, it will have to be her.

After a while, the boy comes back with some kind of wide board, and he and his mom lift Uncle Clay onto it and carry him back toward their house. Jameelah walks beside them, holding Uncle Clay's hand to try to make sure he remembers that he isn't alone. He doesn't wake up at all. To convince herself he's still alive, she watches the rise and fall of his chest the whole entire way, until they break out of the woods into a clearing where there are a lot of buildings. Some of them look like sheds, and some are just frames covered in clear plastic, and at the front of them all there's a big old house.

Just outside of the house, they're met by another boy, this one probably only a few years older than Jameelah. His eyes are wide and he looks pale and scared. He stares at Uncle Clay and swallows like he's trying not to throw up. "Mom," he whispers. "What happened?"

She doesn't answer. Just nudges Jameelah and tells her younger son, "Show her to the guest room."

"No!" Jameelah says, clinging tighter to Uncle Clay's hand.

The lady sighs. "We need to take care of his injuries, and it isn't gonna help if you're in the way. You want him to live, right?"

Jameelah nods, unable to keep her breath from hitching or her eyes from filling with tears again.

"Then go get cleaned up and let us handle it."

Finally, her throat aching, Jameelah lets go of Uncle Clay's hand and steps back. The whole world looks blurry, and it's almost dark now. It takes her a minute to even find the boy she's supposed to be following.

"Get her some clean clothes to change into," the woman calls over her shoulder as she and the older boy walk away carrying Uncle Clay.

Jameelah looks back over her shoulder for one last blurry glimpse of him. She's afraid she'll regret ever letting go of his hand.

What if she never sees him again?

She follows the quiet boy inside and down the stairs to the guest room, which turns out to be in the basement. It's a big bedroom with its own bathroom. Everything is clean and looks pretty nice, but being there just feels like being put in jail.

The boy goes upstairs for a minute and comes back down with an armful of clean T-shirts and basketball shorts, and then he goes up again and returns carrying some books and toys, and a big fluffy teddy bear. He piles everything on the chair next to the bed, steps back awkwardly, and says, "I hope this stuff is okay. Um, I'm sorry about... everything."

Then he runs back upstairs like _he_ is afraid of _her._

He closes the door at the top of the stairs, and after a brief pause, Jameelah hears the scrape of something being pushed in front of it.

She already guessed she was going to be a prisoner here, but the sound of being closed in still makes her have to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from bursting into tears.

It takes a few minutes for her to calm down enough to start looking around and taking stock of her situation.

Now that things are quiet and she's by herself, Jameelah realizes how much she needs a shower. Even after the rain, Uncle Clay's blood is still all over her, and it feels sticky and smells really gross. It makes her not even want to be herself anymore. She needs to get it off _right now._

She picks out a Star Wars T-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts that look like they might almost fit, and then she goes into the bathroom. The door can be bolted from the inside, which she is very thankful for because it makes her feel a tiny bit safer, like this is a little space that belongs only to her.

Once she's all clean and the blood is gone, Jameelah feels a little better. Not much, but a little.

By the time she finally unlocks the door and comes out of the bathroom, the lady has brought down some more stuff: a brand-new toothbrush and toothpaste, a plate of food, and a big stack of DVDs. That's when Jameelah notices the old TV and DVD player in the corner.

She eyes the food suspiciously, but it actually looks pretty good and she's starving, so she finally sits down at the coffee table and starts eating. She waits until her mouth is full before asking, "Is Uncle Clay okay?"

The woman says, "He's fine. He's sleeping right now."

She's lying. There's no way he's 'fine,' not so soon after getting shot.

"I want to go home now," Jameelah says, taking another bite.

The lady looks away and clears her throat. "Soon," she says. "We just have a few things we need to take care of first, and then you can go home, okay?"

Jameelah narrows her eyes. She says, "Okay. Just let me call my parents and tell them so they won't worry about me."

That makes the woman's eyebrows scrunch together. She almost looks a little guilty. "Not just yet," she says, and goes back upstairs before Jameelah has a chance to argue any more, which is a shame, because she had plenty more arguing left in her.

The younger boy comes back downstairs a while later to retrieve the dirty dishes, but other than that, they leave Jameelah alone.

She looks through the toys and books and movies. There's a clock on the bedside table telling her what time it is, how long until bedtime. She ends up picking out a movie to watch. After it's over, she looks at the bed sitting out in the open, then at the bathroom door that locks from the inside.

Jameelah ends up using a towel to wipe the leftover water out of the tub, and then she hauls pillows and blankets into the bathroom and makes herself a nest in there, where it feels safest. She wonders if the lady will be mad about the bed getting all torn up like that, but decides not to care too much.

If that awful woman didn't want her guest bed messed up, then maybe she shouldn't have gone shooting people and kidnapping little kids.

Jameelah locks the door, crawls into her makeshift bed with the teddy bear the boy gave her, and cries herself to sleep because of how much she wants to be in her own bed with her mom tucking her in, and for Uncle Clay to be safe, and for none of this to have ever happened.

The next day is Saturday, and it's mostly just boring. Nobody says anything about her little nest in the bathtub. They feed her. They tell her Uncle Clay is doing all right, and she doesn't believe them. She watches more movies and starts reading a series of books about kids who have magic spirit animals.

She tries the door at the top of the stairs once, just to see if she can get it open. The doorknob turns - it doesn't seem to have a lock on it - but whatever is blocking the door shut holds fast. She can't move it at all.

On Sunday morning, Jameelah wakes up in the bathtub and remembers that this is Mother's Day, and she had planned to bring her mama toast and orange juice and flowers in bed. Instead, Jameelah is gone, and her parents don't even know where she is, and they must be so worried.

She cries until she gives herself a headache.

When the woman comes downstairs with breakfast, she finally gets around to asking, "What's your name?"

Jameelah thinks about that question for a few seconds. Then she announces, "I don't want to tell you."

The lady smiles a little. "Fair enough."

Jameelah feels like she has won a small battle, and it makes her brave enough to say firmly, "I want to see my Uncle Clay now."

The smile goes away. The woman replies, "I don't think that's a good idea."

Jameelah's skin is all prickly and her face feels too hot. "Why not?" She knows she sounds whiny like a little kid, like RJ when he has a tantrum, but she doesn't even care. This lady _deserves_ a tantrum. She's lucky Jameelah hasn't thrown the whole plate of food at her yet.

The woman sighs. She explains, "He's pretty badly injured. It took us a long time to get his bleeding under control. I'm afraid if he sees you, he'll try to get up and hurt himself more and start bleeding again, so I think it's best if you just stay here right now. Okay?"

For a minute, everything is quiet while Jameelah considers that. She decides she doesn't believe it. These people shot Uncle Clay, and they won't let him and Jameelah go home. Why would they be telling her the truth now?

And okay, they gave her the clothes and the teddy bear and the toothbrush and books and movies, but that doesn't mean they're good people. Good people would never have hurt Uncle Clay so bad in the first place - and if they _had,_ by accident or something, then they would have gotten help for him instead of making him and Jameelah stay here.

"If he's hurt so bad," she says, "then you need to take him to a hospital so he can get better."

The lady's eyes flicker away from Jameelah's face. "Like I said, we can't do that right now. We just need a few days to-"

"What if he dies?" Jameelah's heart is beating so hard she can feel it in her throat, but she refuses to back down.

"We won't let him die," the woman says, but she still isn't looking at Jameelah, and suddenly that ringing sound is back in Jameelah's ears.

What if he's dead already?

What if the reason they aren't letting her see him is because he died?

Jameelah knows all about death, obviously; she's not a _baby. _She knows that Uncle Nate and Uncle Adam and Aunt Alana died, and that that means she never gets to see them ever again, and now all the people who loved them just have to live with being sad and missing them forever.

She doesn't want Uncle Clay to be dead like that too. She doesn't want to have to miss him forever. It's not fair.

Another day goes by, and she watches movies and reads books and tries not to think too much. She tries not to think about how today is Monday and she's missing school, and it's her classmate's birthday so they were going to have cupcakes. She tries not to think about her parents being worried and RJ missing her, or about Uncle Clay and how he might be dead.

The lady and the boys are usually pretty loud. Jameelah hears them upstairs a lot, yelling back and forth, tromping around like a herd of elephants.

On Tuesday morning, there's even more commotion than usual. The woman seems distracted when she brings down breakfast. About half an hour later, there's the slam of a door, and then everything goes very, very quiet.

Jameelah sits at the bottom of the stairs and listens as hard as she can.

Nothing but silence.

Is everybody gone?

She climbs cautiously to the top of the stairs and peers under the crack at the bottom of the door. She sees what looks like the legs of a chair, propped at an angle against the door.

She turns the knob and pushes on the door as hard as she can, but it won't budge. The chair doesn't even look like it should be that heavy, not from what she could see of it, but somehow they've got it wedged so tight she just can't move it.

If it's propped against the doorknob, then maybe getting rid of the doorknob would help. She can see where the screws are. Now if she just had a screwdriver.

Shivering a little bit with hope, Jameelah goes back down the stairs and retrieves the metal fork they gave her at breakfast. At first she tries using the tines, but can't get the angle right. The bottom of the fork ends up working better. It doesn't quite fit and it keeps sliding off, but if she tilts it a little bit, she can use the edge of it to get the screws to turn.

The knob falls off with a clatter that makes Jameelah wince and crouch down. She waits, but nothing happens. No one comes to see what the noise was.

She pushes hard on the door, leaning against it with the weight of her whole body, and finally, finally it moves.

She's free.

Heart thumping so hard she can feel it throughout her entire body, Jameelah tiptoes through the house until she finds a telephone, one of the old ones with a cord.

Her hands are shaking so much she can barely use them, and she drops the phone the first time she tries to pick it up. _Be calm,_ she tells herself. _Be brave. Like Mama. Like Daddy. Like Uncle Clay._

She takes a deep breath, lifts the phone again, and steadies her hands enough to dial her parents' number.


	5. The Light the Moon Sends Back

**5\. The Light the Moon Sends Back**

"_Daddy?"_

The surge of relief is probably the strongest emotion Ray Perry has ever felt in his entire life.

Against all odds, his baby girl is _alive._

"Jameelah." His voice comes out choked. "Baby, are you all right?"

"_I'm okay."_ She sniffles a little. "_Can you come get me? I want to go home."_

Head swimming, Ray braces himself against the desk to keep from falling. Detective Pérez pats his arm, giving him an encouraging nod when he glances at her. "Yeah, baby," he says, clearing his throat. "We're gonna come get you real soon. Are you safe right now?"

"_Um..."_ Jameelah sounds uncertain, and Ray could crawl out of his own skin with how desperately he needs to be where she is. To be able to protect her from whatever, _whoever,_ is making her feel unsafe.

"_I think so,"_ she says finally. "_They're not here right now. I snuck upstairs so I could use the phone."_

Ray's skin prickles. "'They'? Who's 'they,' sweetheart?"

"_The lady and her sons. She said I have to stay here for another few days, but I don't want to, Daddy. I want to come home."_ Her voice wobbles a little, but she doesn't cry. She's being so brave.

Pérez taps Ray's arm again, gives him an emphatic nod and a smile.

They've successfully traced the call. Oh thank God.

"We're coming to get you, Jameelah. The police will be there real soon, and they're gonna bring you to us, okay?" It takes every ounce of Ray's hard-earned resolve and self control to keep his voice reasonably calm, but he manages it. Even gets himself together enough to remember to ask, "Where's Clay? Is he there?"

"_They shot him, Daddy. He was hurt really bad."_ His brave baby girl finally falters, her voice breaking. "_There was a lot of blood, and he said he was okay but he wasn't okay at all. He fell down and didn't get up."_ Dropping to a wobbly whisper, she adds, "_I think... I think maybe he died."_

Ray closes his eyes. Though nothing can entirely overcome his relief at hearing Jameelah's voice, the twist in his gut is physically painful - a combination of fear and grief for his friend, concern for his daughter's safety, and horror and fury that she had to witness that. "When was the last time you saw him?" He asks shakily.

Jameelah sniffles again, audibly choking back a sob. "_The first day. When they brought us here."_

Ray's heart keeps sinking, right on through the floor and into the bedrock below.

If Spenser was that badly injured four days ago, and Jameelah hasn't seen him since...

_Oh, Clay. Brother, I'm so sorry._

It _hurts_ to think about the probability that he has been dead this entire time, likely dumped like garbage in a shallow grave somewhere in the woods, while even Ray was doubting him.

Turns out Spenser was exactly who he seemed to be: a man who would die trying to protect his teammate's daughter.

On the other end of the call, Jameelah draws a sudden, sharp breath. "_I heard something,"_ she whispers. "_I need to go."_

The surge of terror hits Ray like lightning. "Jam, wait-"

A click, and the line goes dead.

Detective Pérez squeezes Ray's shoulder hard to get his attention. "We've got the location," she says calmly. "SWAT is headed in now. They'll get her out. Okay?"

Ray nods. He tries to breathe. A glance at Naima shows that she has both hands pressed over her mouth, her eyes wide open but not focused on anything.

Pérez manages to snap them out of it by saying, "The site itself is obviously off limits right now, but I can get you as close as safely possible so that you can meet them when they come out. Would you like to do that?"

Ray somehow manages a nod. At his side, Naima clears her throat and whispers hoarsely, "Yes."

When they turn to go with Pérez, Ray catches a glimpse of the other members of Bravo, who stayed quiet and out of the way, but must have been able to hear the whole call. They're all pale and still, looking as shell shocked as he feels.

It's so damn hard, having the skills they do, knowing a child they love is in danger - possibly their brother too, if he's even still alive - and being unable to do a single thing about it except wait and hope that SWAT can pull this off.

And then there's the news about Clay. The awful double-edged sword of knowing he's innocent, but also likely dead. The team will have heard that too.

The last thing Ray sees before he goes out the door is Sonny, half sitting against a cabinet, hands on his knees, staring blankly at the floor.

Pérez drives them to a spot that's apparently not far from the house where Jameelah has been held for days. Once they arrive, there's nothing to do but wait.

There are other vehicles parked nearby, some combination of local police and NCIS, with a few personnel milling around. Pérez sticks around for a few minutes, then leaves to talk to one of the NCIS agents. Ray can't keep himself from watching their every move, over-analyzing their expressions and body language, trying to determine if they've received any new information yet.

He feels like his entire body is crawling with fire ants. He can't sit still.

Ray is painfully well aware that the moment of rescue can be one of the most dangerous, potentially lethal parts of the entire experience of being held hostage. If SWAT does a single damn thing wrong... if they don't get in there fast enough... if there's a crossfire...

Naima stands on tiptoes to slide her arms around Ray's neck, drawing his gaze down to her face. She looks terrified, her lips trembling, but she manages to steady her voice and say, "Look at me, baby. Breathe."

He pulls her to his chest and breathes in the smell of her hair, of safety and home, and tries not to go insane with the waiting.

After what feels like forever but is probably no more than 20 minutes, one of the NCIS agents who's been coordinating with local police jogs over to them. He's smiling, open and genuine.

Hope swells, strong enough to be dangerous, but Ray can't quite let himself believe it until the man actually says the words: "They've got her. She's safe. They're bringing her out now."

The relief hits Ray like a physical force, so powerful that it turns his knees liquid and his vision cloudy. He feels Naima slide her arm around his back to keep him from falling. Glancing down, he finds her beaming up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. He's only ever seen that expression on her face once before: on the day Jameelah was released from the NICU and they finally got to bring her home.

The NCIS agent continues, "SWAT found her hiding in the basement. She was alone in the house. Well, except for a cat, apparently." A pause, and then the agent adds more quietly, his smile dimming a bit: "They're still looking for Spenser."

The thought of how that search is likely to end - especially since they didn't find Clay anywhere in the house - takes the edge off the joy, but only just slightly. There will be time to grieve later. Right now, Ray's baby girl is _alive_ and secure and he's about to see her for the first time in what feels like years.

A couple more agonizing minutes pass, and then there she is, walking on her own, clinging tightly to the hand of a SWAT officer.

She's wearing unfamiliar clothes and her hair is in a messy, tangled braid that looks like she did it herself, but she appears healthy. Safe.

When she catches sight of her parents, Jameelah's entire face lights up, and then just as quickly crumples. She runs to meet them, reaching up her arms, and the three of them end up just collapsing to the ground together, holding each other and laughing and crying so hard that it takes a few minutes to even be able to say anything coherent.

Ray distantly realizes that Jameelah's elbow is poking him right in the bruised ribs, but he doesn't even care. Right now, for this one shining, delirious moment, there's absolutely nothing in the world that can hurt him.

Once Jameelah finally calms down enough to talk, and once her parents manage to stop squeezing her tight and planting frantic kisses on her head for long enough that she's able to catch her breath, the first thing she says is, "I'm sorry."

Naima tells her fiercely, "Don't be sorry, baby. You don't have anything to be sorry for."

"But you were so worried because of me," she says in a small voice.

"That wasn't your fault," Naima responds immediately. "None of this was your fault. Are you okay? You're not hurt?" Her nurse instincts apparently kicking in, she holds her daughter out at arm's length and starts checking her over for injuries.

"I'm fine. They didn't hurt me. They were pretty nice to me, mostly. They gave me stuff, like a teddy bear and books and movies, and these clothes." She looks down at herself, and her breath hitches. "My other clothes, um, they were ruined. They had... a lot of blood on them."

"From Clay?" Ray asks softly.

Jameelah nods, swiping tears off her face. "Yeah. Um, he picked me up and carried me for a little while, right at first."

God. Shot, most likely dying, and he still tried to carry Jameelah to safety.

It cuts Ray deep to think that he'll probably never get a chance to thank his brother for that. To tell him that he's sorry for ever having doubted. That he's so proud to have known him.

Naima pulls Jameelah close again, kissing her tousled hair for the hundredth time. "Do you remember where he was hurt, baby?"

"Uh... here, I think." Jameelah pats near the center of her chest.

Ray closes his eyes. Opens them and finds Naima looking at him, her lips pressed together.

They don't have to say anything. There's not much _to_ say.

"Uncle Clay tried really hard to get me somewhere safe." Jameelah's voice trembles. "But he was hurt too much. When he fell down, he told me to keep going, but I couldn't. I just couldn't leave him. That's why they caught me. I'm sorry. And... and it was my fault we were out there at all, because I wanted to pick flowers."

Another piece of the puzzle slots into place. That would be why they left town.

Ray's breath catches, and he reaches out to draw Jameelah into another fierce hug. Oh, his sweet, brave, loyal girl.

He pulls back a bit so he can cup her face in his hands and look straight into her beautiful brown eyes. "I'm gonna tell you something, baby, and I need you to listen real careful, okay?"

Jameelah nods.

"You didn't do anything wrong. Not one bit of this was your fault. You made it back to us, and that means you did exactly what you were supposed to. You were so brave and we are so, so proud of you. Okay?"

She nods again, her chin wobbling. Naima joins them, hugging her daughter from the other side so that Jameelah is once again sandwiched, safe and warm, between her parents.

They stay like that for a few minutes, all of them breathing in the quiet, just holding each other close.

Then Jameelah whispers in a tiny voice, "But Uncle Clay, though."

Ray's throat closes up. When he doesn't manage to answer, Naima smoothly takes over, assuring their daughter, "The police are looking for him, okay? They're doing everything they can to find him."

Jameelah shivers but seems to accept that, snuggling down deeper into her parents' embrace.

It's sinking in, now that Ray has his little girl safely in his arms, the reality of what has happened here.

Ray's teammate, a brilliantly talented Tier One operator who's survived so many missions and deployments, including a helicopter crash, 7.62 round and IED blast, has likely been murdered while _picking flowers_ stateside. While unarmed and utterly unprepared for danger.

And now Ray's 9-year-old daughter is going to have to deal with the guilt and grief of that, the horror of having had to watch helplessly while someone she loved bled out, for the rest of her life.

It's so unfair. Ray doesn't understand.

He's so thankful to God for the life of his child, and at the same time, so confused about why this happened at all.

He tries hard to let it go, to trust, to find some shred of faith that maybe Spenser is still out there somewhere breathing.

But then Ray looks up to find that the NCIS agent who told them about Jameelah's rescue has returned. The man hesitates, glancing between Ray and Naima and their daughter, seeming to debate exactly how much he should say. Finally, wearing a solemn expression, he tells them quietly, "We've found him."


	6. The Twilight of His Last Look

**6\. The Twilight of His Last Look**

Clay wakes up in some kind of shed.

That's not even the surprising part. The surprising part is that he's waking up at all.

He's flat on his back, lying on something that feels reasonably soft but is low to the ground; a mattress or pile of blankets, maybe. Gingerly turning his head, he spots a full bottle of Gatorade sitting on the floor beside him, cool enough to be beaded with condensation in the warm air.

Clay's upper torso is tightly swathed in bulky, rust-stained strips of white cloth. Beneath all the makeshift bandaging, his wound hurts, a distant sort of ache that promises to worsen at any provocation - pain like a predator lurking in the underbrush, just waiting for a chance to strike. He's also got a throbbing headache and his mouth is so dry that he can barely swallow. Between that, the fuzzy thinking, cold extremities and severe fatigue, it's clear that while he did unexpectedly survive the blood loss, it's still kicking his ass pretty hard.

Judging by the way he feels, he's seriously dehydrated. Needs to replace some of the fluids he's lost, which he's guessing is the purpose of the Gatorade. Shooting a guy and then giving him sports drinks is definitely mixed messaging, but it's not like Clay is going to complain about the fact that, for whatever reason, they didn't go ahead and finish him off.

Preemptively gritting his teeth, he makes an attempt to reach out for the bottle. His hand moves all of maybe three inches before agony lights up his chest. Clay waits it out, eyes squeezed shut for the endless seconds it takes for the pain to recede back to bearable.

Well, so much for that idea.

He can barely move his arms. No way he'll be able to open the bottle, lift it to his mouth, actually take a drink.

Having no choice but to lie there, mouth drier than Afghanistan, and stare at the cold drink feels like a particularly cruel form of torture.

A few minutes pass like that, with Clay just glaring resentfully at the Gatorade while breathing as shallowly as possible to try to avoid worsening the grating ache in his sternum, before he suddenly remembers.

Jameelah.

Ray and Naima's daughter was with him, and now she's not.

It's his job to keep her safe. He has to find her. Now.

Using his arms to push himself up is obviously a no-go, but maybe if he can just use his abdominal muscles to sit up, then get his feet under him-

He makes it less than halfway up, and then it feels like someone detonates an IED inside his chest.

Clay falls back, the impact on the blankets seeming to set off a second bomb. There's nothing he can do except try to ride it out, fight to keep breathing and swallow back the surge of nausea as his entire body breaks out in a cold sweat.

He can't let himself puke right now. Can't even imagine the agony that would bring.

Once the nausea finally subsides a bit and the pain ebbs back to a dull, exhausting roar, Clay regains enough awareness to realize his chest now feels warm and wet, which tells him that he might have really fucked up here.

Forcing his eyes open, he glances down. Sure enough, there are spots of fresh blood visible on the bandages.

The blood is dark and appears to be seeping rather than spurting, which explains a lot about how Clay is still breathing right now - but it doesn't mean he can't still go into hypovolemic shock and die. It'll just happen more slowly.

The slide and clack of a deadbolt, followed by the creak of a door opening, heralds the arrival of the woman from before.

She isn't carrying a rifle this time, rather a handful of pill bottles and bandages, and a jar of something that looks like it might be broth.

She stops dead when she sees that Clay is awake, and then her eyes drop to his torso and she says, "God dammit. You tried to get up, didn't you?"

Clay glares at her.

"Do you have any idea how long it took us to get that bleeding to stop?" The woman snaps, setting down everything she was carrying and kneeling at his side.

Clay wants to snarl back at her, something terse and cutting about how he wouldn't be bleeding at all if her stupid kid hadn't _shot him,_ but the connection between his brain and mouth seems to have burned out. All he manages is a faint groan when the woman applies pressure and starts adding another layer of bandaging.

Once the bleeding seems more or less back under control, Clay finally manages to remember how words work.

"Jam-" He second-guesses using her name, and quickly switches to, "The girl?"

His voice is weak and ragged, a pitiful croak of a sound, but he manages to make the words intelligible.

"She's fine," the woman replies as she opens the Gatorade. "Last I saw, she was watching Star Wars."

Clay gives her a look he hopes conveys what he's feeling, which is, _I'd take your word for it, except I hate your guts and trust you less than I do the Taliban._

"Need to see her," he mumbles.

The woman grimaces, shaking her head. "Don't think that's a good idea. You... don't look so good right now. Pretty sure it would just freak her out."

Before he can argue further, she lifts his head a bit and holds the open bottle of Gatorade to his lips. He wants to gulp, but knows better than to risk it, so instead takes careful sips until she moves the bottle away.

"Think that's enough for now," the woman says. "I'll give you more in a few minutes, if you manage to keep it down." She holds up the pill bottle, turning it so he can see the label. "Want some Tylenol?"

Probably won't put much of a dent in the pain, but at least it's better than nothing. Reluctantly, he nods, and she helps him take a couple of the pills with another sip of Gatorade.

Feeling this helpless would rankle no matter what; it isn't in Clay's nature to be dependent on others. Being forced into reliance on the nutjob who has kidnapped him and Jameelah? It makes him fucking _furious._

Yet he bites down on the rage, because the last thing he wants to do is piss this woman off and make her more likely to harm Jameelah.

"So," he manages. "What's the plan here?"

The woman looks at him, then quickly away. She starts peeling the label off the Gatorade. "We're leaving," she says. "Just got some stuff to do first. Don't worry, we'll turn y'all loose soon as we're ready. We've got no inclination to hurt anybody."

Clay's eyes flicker down toward his wound, and the woman's face winces a bit before going back to stone. "That was an accident," she says evenly.

It was fucking negligence was what it was, on the part of the kid _and_ whoever let him have access to a gun without first teaching him proper trigger discipline, but whatever. Clay doesn't have the energy to argue.

The woman gets to her feet. "If I leave you here, are you gonna try to get up again?"

He meets her gaze, challenging and defiant. "Need to see her," he says.

She sighs. "God. Fine, hang on. I'll be right back. _Do not move!"_

The woman comes back without Jameelah, which briefly sends a spike of terror through Clay's heart, but then she holds out her phone to show him the photo on the screen.

In it, Jameelah Perry is curled up on an old couch, her head resting on a big fluffy teddy bear. Her eyes are fixed on the TV in front of her. She's wearing different clothes, but looks okay. Unharmed.

Clay exhales, letting his eyes slide closed. He's still worried and pissed off, but at least he has some evidence that Jameelah is alive.

"Guessing she's not your kid," the woman says, "given the whole 'Uncle Clay' thing. Niece?"

"Something like that," Clay mumbles without opening his eyes.

The woman gives him more Gatorade, coaxes him into trying some of the broth (which tastes surprisingly good), and then leaves, telling him to rest.

Clay hears the clack of the deadbolt sliding into place, and then he's out.

Time passes in odd, stuttering fragments. The woman comes back in, then is replaced by a boy, this one younger than the one who shot Clay. He's maybe 13, lanky and big-eyed, with the oversized feet of a child who has a growth spurt in his future.

The boy looks stricken, sad and guilty, wincing every time Clay shows pain. Somehow being helped by him rankles less than when it's the woman. Not much, but some.

Once when he leaves, the kid lets the door swing open wide enough for Clay to see what's beyond it. The shed apparently faces some sort of big greenhouse.

Huh.

That might help explain a few things.

The next time the woman comes in with more broth and Gatorade, Clay says without thinking, "You got a grow op up here, huh?"

As soon as the words are out, he winces internally.

Ah, what the hell. These people have already committed kidnapping and attempted murder. Growing and selling some weed is not exactly the worst of their crimes that he knows about at this point.

The woman lets out a slow breath. "Yeah." Almost defensively, she adds, "No meth or anything. I don't make that shit. My old man did, but just being around meth can fuck you up, even if you don't use. I wouldn't expose my kids to that." She meets Clay's gaze for just a flicker of a second before looking away again. "I'm just trying to get by, you know? Trying to provide for them. I want them to have a good life. Opportunities I didn't have. That takes money."

Clay is really tempted to tell her that if she wants sympathy and understanding, she's come to the wrong damn place. She should probably seek that from somebody she didn't shoot and kidnap.

He'd also like to ask her just how good a life she thinks her kid is going to have in prison.

But he still doesn't want to do anything that might make her more likely to kill him or harm Jameelah, so he doesn't say any of that. Just mumbles, "Yeah. I get it."

She huffs a humorless laugh. "No you don't. You'd probably love to wring my goddamn neck right now. Know I would if I were you." She shrugs a little. "Just wanted you to know, we ain't monsters. And we won't hurt the little one."

She leaves. It gets dark. Clay sleeps.

There's a time period, after maybe a day or so, when he actually starts feeling somewhat better. The Gatorade and broth help beat back the dehydration, and he even manages to eat some solid food. He's still in pain, but feels marginally stronger and clearer-headed.

It doesn't last.

Eventually his chest starts to hurt worse, sharper and deeper, a relentless throb that keeps him from sleeping. The fatigue returns and is joined by a sort of listless, restless shivering. He feels too warm, right up until he's freezing.

Things have just started going downhill, and Clay isn't sure the woman even realizes yet that they have, when she returns and says, "So. You're military."

He feels a fuzzy surge of alarm at that, his sluggish brain scrambling to figure out whether that information will make her more or less likely to kill them. He tries to stall, asking hoarsely, "What makes you say that?"

She glances briefly at his face, then away. "I watch the news."

That should have occurred to him. He and Jameelah have been missing for... he's not sure exactly how long, but probably at least a couple days. Of course people are looking for them.

"The little girl, did you kidnap her?" the woman asks abruptly.

Clay blinks, the shock blanking his mind for a few seconds. "_What?"_

She sighs. "Yeah. Didn't think so. Kind of seems like the police do, though. They're describing you as a 'person of interest' in connection with her disappearance."

No, that can't... Surely they wouldn't...

"Her parents had me pick her up from school," Clay says numbly. "She wanted to get wildflowers for her mom. That was... I was gonna take her home right after, but..." He moves his hand toward his chest, wincing as the fire reignites at that small motion. Tries to breathe as shallowly as possible until it subsides.

"Told you not to move," the woman says gruffly. "You need more Tylenol?"

Eyes squeezed shut, Clay shakes his head no.

Okay. Okay, so the police maybe think he took Jameelah. Hearing that feels like a punch to the bullet wound, but it doesn't mean it's what everyone believes. The people who know him, they won't buy it. Bravo. His brothers. Ray and Naima.

Right?

They could never think he would hurt Jameelah.

"Listen," the woman says, dragging Clay's slipping focus back to her. "You're not gonna die, okay? I don't kill people. That's not what we are. We'll get out of here soon as we can, and make sure you get some help once we're far enough away."

Clay doesn't bother telling her that that moment might not come soon enough, not unless she's got a fully equipped medical team standing by ready to keep him stable. He's already survived longer than expected, but things clearly aren't headed in the right direction. His chest feels much too warm, but everywhere else the chill keeps slicing deeper, cutting into his bones.

Infection, probably, and he thinks there might be something off with his lung too. Can't really tell for sure. Just knows breathing is difficult and hurts like hell, and the air he takes in doesn't seem to contain as much oxygen as it should.

Between the pain and the scrambled thinking, it takes Clay significantly longer than it should to register the other potentially serious issue here.

He's on the news.

Possibly the national news by now.

_Fuck._

Dragging in a strained breath, he asks, "What... did they say about me? On the news?"

The woman hesitates, glances back at him, eyebrows drawn together. "Uh, not much. Mostly just that you were military. Navy, I think?"

Not like her knowing the branch really makes any difference here, so he gives her a faint nod.

"Oh, and I guess your dad wrote a book or something?"

Jesus.

Definitely too much to hope for that no reporters would manage to put those particular pieces together. Clay cringes a little at the thought of how his father is probably reacting to all of this decidedly not positive publicity.

If he does survive this, he's never gonna hear the end of it.

On the bright side, it at least sounds like Clay's, and Ray's, role with DEVGRU hasn't been publicly revealed. Not yet, anyway.

If they're very, very lucky, maybe it won't be.

And if Clay is even _more_ lucky, maybe he'll live long enough to care.

His condition continues to worsen, slowly but steadily. He's mostly too miserable to really sleep but too weak to fully wake up either, so he floats through a vague fog of voices and pain, and water being trickled into his mouth.

It keeps getting harder to pull in enough oxygen. When he's lucid enough, he tries to control his breathing, but it's nearly impossible to keep it from going back to rapid and shallow the instant he loses focus.

He wants his brothers to come for him. To save him.

He doesn't want to die here, pointlessly, alone.

The younger boy is the one who's present the morning when Clay finally panics, wheezing desperately, convinced he's going to drown on dry land.

Eyes huge and scared, the kid hesitates, hands out slightly, like he's afraid he'll make things worse by trying to help.

"Please," Clay gasps. "Can't... can you lift... lift me..."

The choppy, fragmented words seem to shake the boy out of his stupor. He kneels at Clay's side, slides an arm beneath his back, and carefully lifts Clay's upper body, shoving wadded-up blankets beneath to prop him up.

It helps, a little. Teeth gritted, Clay forces himself to focus on his breathing, to ignore the pain it causes. In. Out. Slow and deep.

The kid runs out of the shed, leaving the door open, and returns moments later with his mom.

"See?" The boy points at Clay. His voice trembles. "There's something wrong, Mom. I think he's gonna die. Soon."

She shakes her head, but doesn't say anything, not right away.

The kid rambles on. "Please can we just go now and then call an ambulance for him once we're far enough away? If he dies-"

She shakes her head again, more emphatically. "We can't, not yet. We'll lose everything we've built here. Won't have a damn thing left to start over with, and I will not be put in that position again." Her voice is unyielding, shaking a bit with what sounds like anger, or fear, or both.

The boy doesn't back down, though. "And how much will we lose if he dies and we go to prison for murder?" His voice cracks. He sounds terrified, and his eyes shine with tears. "And how much will _he_ lose if he's _dead?"_

"He's not going to die," the woman insists, raising her voice to bulldoze right over her son's pleas. "He's a soldier."

"_Sailor,"_ Clay whispers, but it's barely audible and they pay him no mind.

"He's strong," she continues. "He'll pull through. We'll get him help. Enough that he can hold out another couple days. Just until we're ready."

Apparently Clay has just enough energy left to feel a faint twist of hope somewhere beneath his ribs. "Help?" He manages to make his voice loud enough to be heard this time.

The woman glances at him. "Yeah. I'm gonna have a friend come look at you. He's a vet. He can treat your infection."

It takes Clay's exhausted, muddled brain a few seconds to catch on that 'vet' must mean 'veterinarian,' not 'veteran.'

The hope ebbs a bit; Clay knows he needs a _real_ doctor with access to a fully equipped hospital, not some stopgap measure. This has progressed well beyond the bounds of field medicine.

But hell, maybe it'll help him survive a little longer, and that's better than the alternative, right?

Clay is miserable and can feel himself fading, but he's not yet far enough gone to have lost his grasp on one of his strongest attributes: a near-boundless capacity to be a little shit.

Drawing on that power, he rasps, "I better... still have my balls... when he gets done with me."

The woman actually grins a tiny bit at that, but then just as quickly wipes the smile off her face, jerking her gaze away like she doesn't want to be reminded that the pitiful, pain-wracked creature slowly dying in her shed is a real person.

"I'll go pick him up now," she announces, still not looking at Clay.

"I'll stay here," her son volunteers. Just a tiny bit too quickly.

_Please,_ Clay thinks. _God, please..._

The woman narrows her eyes at her son. "Nope," she says, clearly and coolly. "You're coming with me."

Dammit.

Well, she may be a tremendously shitty mom, but she _is_ still a mom. If _Clay_ was able to guess that the kid was planning to call 911, he should have known she would pick up on it too.

They leave, and he drifts. Everything feels cold, even the sunlight, and very distant.

Clay fights to stay, just for a little while longer. He doesn't want to leave yet.

He takes in everything - the smell of damp earth; light glinting off the fragile, intricate threads of a spiderweb overhead; the feel of the rough boards beneath his fingers.

This is the world. It's real, and in this moment, he is too. Still real. Still here.

When they find him there, his eyes are still open, staring up at the light.

* * *

Author's Note: Yes I am dragging this out for as long as I can, and no I am not sorry :)

(If it helps, he's not dead. I promise.)


	7. When I Come Back

**7\. When I Come Back**

"We've found him," the NCIS agent says.

Even with Jameelah between them, Naima can feel the way Ray tenses, like he's trying to brace himself against a blow he knows he can never truly prepare for.

Part of Naima wants to stop the agent right there, to stand up and carry her daughter away from here so that Jameelah won't have to hear this, but she finds herself frozen in place.

And then the man continues, "He's critical. It's pretty bad. They're getting paramedics up there to try to stabilize him so he can be moved."

The news is so different from what Naima expected that it takes her a few extra seconds to even comprehend it.

The NCIS agent continues to look at them worriedly, his eyebrows drawn together as though he believes he has just delivered terrible news. Naima thinks he must not understand the degree to which they felt certain that their friend must be dead already.

"Uncle Clay is alive?" Jameelah's voice trembles with hope. "Can I see him?"

She glances up at her parents, and then all three of them look at the agent. He holds out for maybe five seconds before caving. "So long as you stay out of the way," he says.

It isn't far up the gravel road to the spot where all the buildings cluster together beneath the trees. They arrive only minutes before the paramedics bring Clay out of a shed on a stretcher, carrying him toward the waiting ambulance.

In Naima's professional opinion, Clay looks _terrible._ Except for flushed blotches over his cheekbones, his skin is nearly translucent, eyes sunken, cheeks hollow and drawn. He's exhibiting tachypnea, breathing rapid and much too shallow, and his dry, cracked lips look bluish.

With an untreated GSW and those symptoms, Naima's mind jumps immediately to the possibility of sepsis. She knows she isn't and can't be involved in treating her friend, but her instincts aren't easy to turn off, and she itches to be able to run a point-of-care blood lactate test on him _right now._

When Clay's anxious, erratic, fever-bright gaze lands on Ray, he tries to sit up, struggling weakly against the straps securing him to the backboard. "Ray," he rasps faintly. "Jameelah, she... I'm so sorry, I-"

Clay's agitation apparently makes Ray forget the whole 'stay out of the way' thing, because he quickly steps forward to lay a reassuring hand on his teammate's arm. "Jameelah's right here, brother. She's safe. She's just fine." His voice is unsteady as he visibly fights for composure.

"Uncle Clay!" The child in question makes a sudden break for the stretcher, and Naima has to move quickly to intercept her daughter and prevent what would have been a very painful, and potentially disastrous, tackle-hug.

At the sound of Jameelah's voice, all the tension abruptly leaves Clay's body. His head falls back, eyes sliding closed. "Hey, kiddo," he breathes.

Naima spots a paramedic she recognizes and quietly asks him, "How is he?"

The man shakes his head, lips pressed together. "Infected GSW to the chest. Low BP, elevated temp and heart rate, hypoxemia. Needed to be in a hospital, oh, about four days ago." Tone softening at her expression, he adds, "He's hanging in there."

Naima nods. Passing Jameelah to Ray, she leans down over the stretcher, presses a kiss to Clay's overly warm forehead, and tells him firmly, "You hold on, do you hear me, Clay Spenser?"

Clay doesn't open his eyes again, but the faintest hint of a smile touches the corners of his mouth. He sucks in a shallow breath and then whispers almost inaudibly, "Yes ma'am."

Another paramedic leans over him, fitting an oxygen mask over his face. Then he's in the ambulance and gone, leaving Ray and Naima to hold their daughter.

Detective Pérez stops by, smiling at the sight of Ray pulling Jameelah close and tucking her head more securely into the crook of his neck.

"Well, it looks like you were right about your friend, Mr. Perry," Pérez says. Eyes soft and a little sad, she adds, "I'm really glad you were."

Naima can fill in the words left unspoken: the detective wishes she saw this outcome more often.

What happens next is a bit of a blur, with Ray and Naima caught up in a dizzying swirl of happiness that Jameelah is here and safe, mixed with lingering fear that she will somehow disappear again if they take their eyes off her or turn loose of her for even an instant.

NCIS and the police talk to them and to Jameelah, and then finally they get to go home. On the way, Ray makes a call. Naima knows who it is to even before he says, "Hey, Jace. We've got them. They're both alive. Jameelah's fine. Scared, but not hurt at all." A pause. "Yeah, he's in bad shape, but he was conscious. Knew who we were."

He gives the name of the hospital where Clay is being taken. Naima guesses that by the time she and Ray and Jameelah make it home, the rest of Bravo will already be planted in that waiting room, hoping for news.

Once Naima's family is finally reunited, the happy chaos temporarily distracts her from thinking much about Clay at all.

There's RJ's wild, irrepressible joy at finally seeing his big sister again, and the way Jameelah's face lights up as she drops to her knees and throws her arms open to him.

There's Naima's mother, sobbing with relief as she gathers both children close.

When some news does arrive, it's not about Clay, but rather the person who kidnapped him and Jameelah. It's a relief to hear that the woman is already in police custody.

They were able to determine the woman's identity and license plate number based on her residence, and Clay managed to tell NCIS that she had gone to pick up a veterinarian she believed could treat his injuries. From there, local police helped pinpoint exactly where she was most likely headed, and it took less than an hour to pick her up, along with her 12-year-old son and a seemingly very confused veterinarian.

There's just one problem: Clay apparently also informed NCIS that there was an older son as well, a teenager who actually fired the shot, and no one seems to have any idea where he is.

An update on Clay finally comes later in the afternoon. Jason is the one who calls, and he doesn't provide a lot of detail; just that Clay is alive, in the ICU being treated for severe sepsis, and the doctors seem cautiously optimistic that he will pull through.

The rest of the day is a whirlwind that Naima will later remember only in bits and pieces. Trying to get Jameelah settled back in. Determining, with her input, how soon she will feel comfortable going back to school. Fielding a call from Detective Pérez, who offers a recommendation of a good child therapist that specializes in traumatic events.

Naima is grateful for that, because while Jameelah wasn't injured, she has clearly been affected by the kidnapping and by what she saw happen to Clay, and that's something they will need to get ahead of as quickly as they can.

It ends up being a couple days before Ray and Naima go in to visit Clay, which Naima feels a bit guilty for, even though she knows Jason, Sonny, Trent and Brock are rotating staying with Spenser as much as they're allowed.

Jameelah desperately wants to see Clay, but the hospital doesn't permit children under the age of 12 to visit ICU patients. The fact that Ray and Naima can't bring her along means they can't go at all until she's feeling secure enough to let them out of her sight, which takes a little while.

Finally, Jameelah agrees to stay home with her grandmother, plus Trent, Brock and Cerberus. Naima's gut twists with worry that eases slightly when they pull out of the driveway and she catches sight of Jameelah and RJ in the yard, playing boisterously with the dog. Both children are already covered in mud and grass stains, and their faces are bright with laughter.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Naima finally gets some clear answers on Clay's condition, more detailed than the fragments of information Jason has been passing along to Ray over the phone.

Clay is about as stable as could be expected under the circumstances. They're keeping him in the ICU for now to continue intensely monitoring the situation, especially his cardiac and renal functions, but he seems to be responding well to the antibiotics and fluids. If his steady improvement continues and he doesn't require any more dialysis, he'll likely be moved to a step-down unit within 24 hours, and then hopefully to a general ward a few days after that.

The bullet that hit him was a .22 LR round fired at relatively close range. It entered at a slight angle, fractured his sternum and bruised the underlying lung, but then deflected off and out without penetrating his thoracic cavity. In addition to the fracture and pulmonary contusion, he had significant soft tissue damage and venous bleeding.

If you look beyond the part where he was unfortunate enough to get shot while out picking flowers, Clay is lucky to have survived at all. He's lucky that no arteries were damaged; that the bullet didn't ricochet into his heart or lung; that he didn't suffer a pneumothorax, which could have killed him during those four long days without treatment; that the infection he developed didn't send him into full-blown septic shock before he could be rescued.

His medical team isn't ready to make any concrete predictions yet, cautioning that he's got a long way to go and his pulmonary contusion and fractured sternum leave him at an elevated risk of developing pneumonia during recuperation, but Naima feels confident that his odds of making a full recovery are significantly better than they were after Manila, and she has long since learned never to underestimate Clay Spenser's stubbornness and determination.

When they finally actually make it into Clay's room, he is asleep. The sweep of his eyelashes resting on his cheeks makes him look so young that Naima's heart clenches with a sort of powerful, protective fondness.

He looks better. Still paler than he should be, vivid dark circles visible beneath his eyes, but at least he doesn't appear to be at death's door anymore. His breathing is visibly improved, and there's a little color back in his face, his lips more pink than violet.

They try to be quiet, but Clay stirs and opens his eyes anyway, breaking into a tired, groggy smile when he sees them. The fragile happiness doesn't erase the deep pain lines around his eyes.

"Hey, brother." Ray's voice is gentle, the same tone he often uses with Jameelah and RJ. He pats Clay's arm. "How you holding up?"

A faint grimace crosses Clay's face. "Tired," he whispers.

Naima knows the sort of exhaustion he means: bone-deep, all-encompassing, unimproved by sleep. When Clay developed sepsis, his body had already been badly weakened by blood loss. If he hadn't been so strong and healthy going into the ordeal, he probably would have just died before anyone had a chance to help him.

As it is, it will be a long time before he feels anywhere near normal again. Likely longer than he realizes, and not just because of the sepsis; his fractured sternum could take months to fully heal. Until it does, using his arms, coughing, and even breathing will be very painful.

Clay's eyes are already starting to droop. He forces them back open and asks, "Jameelah okay?"

"She's just fine," Ray assures him. "Back home playing with Brock and Cerb right now. She can't wait to see you."

Another faint smile flickers across Clay's face, but only lasts for an instant. "I'm sorry," he breathes. "Screwed up."

Ray shakes his head. Not quite managing to conceal the emotion in his voice, he says, "You do not need to apologize to us, Clay."

Spenser doesn't look convinced, but he's obviously too exhausted to continue the conversation right now. Naima brushes his hair back from his sweaty face and tells him, "We'll talk about it later, okay? Right now you need to rest."

A tiny nod, and then his eyes slip closed.

They leave, handing off to Sonny and Jason. Sonny complains about how boring it is to 'just watch Goldilocks sleep for hours,' but Naima notices that he gets back inside the room as quickly as he possibly can.

On the walk out to the parking lot, Naima thinks about the talk she promised Clay they would have, and her chest starts to feel tight with tension.

Given that Clay was busy slowly dying from an untreated gunshot wound while in captivity, Naima doubts he had much time to think through what might be going on back home - but at some point he is going to learn about everything that happened during those horrible days when he and Jameelah were missing. He's going to find out that he was the main suspect. 'Person of interest.' Whatever.

When that happens, it's possible, likely even, that he will look Ray and Naima in the eyes and ask, _But y'all didn't believe it, right? Y'all knew I would never hurt her?_

The thought of that moment terrifies Naima, because she doesn't have a single clue what she will say to him.

How can she possibly explain it to him when it's something she barely understands herself? How will she ever be able to truly convey the depth of that sickening terror, the way it ate away at her until she felt like there was nothing else left inside her head?

Even though the prospect of having that discussion scares her, she is so, so grateful that it's a situation they will have to face, because it means Clay is _alive_ to ask that question. It means they didn't lose him.

Everything else they can work through. It might be difficult and awkward and painful for everyone involved, but deep down she has faith that they will get through it.

It's what family does.


	8. Waking From a Nightmare

**8\. Waking From a Nightmare**

When Spenser gets discharged from the hospital, there's some debate on exactly where he should stay.

He's doing significantly better, but not yet ready to be on his own; the sternal fracture makes it impossible for him to lift anything heavy, and he's still weak as hell and will need assistance with everyday tasks for a while.

Of course Clay just wants to go home to his own apartment, and his teammates (especially Brock and Sonny) are more than willing to stay with him there, but the problem is that there's always a chance they could get spun up at any moment. He needs help from someone who is guaranteed to consistently be around.

Last time, after Manila, that person was Swanny.

This time Clay admits in a quiet monotone, with his eyes downcast, that he doesn't have anybody.

It only takes one quick glance at Naima for Ray to confirm that she's thinking the same thing he is.

"You'll stay with us until you're feeling better," he says, calm but firm, sounding a bit like he's giving an order.

Clay's gaze flickers up, then quickly down. "But y'all are busy with the kids, and Naima's got work-"

Naima cuts him off. "I only work three days a week, and my mother is usually there whenever I'm not." Softening her voice, she adds, "We'll figure it out, okay?"

Spenser still looks uncertain, but he seems to know better than to try arguing with Naima once her mind has been made up.

Ray and Naima are still adjusting to the new house, still wincing a bit at the amount of their new mortgage payment each month, but right now Ray is incredibly thankful they went ahead and took the plunge, because it means they now have enough space to take in strays.

It will be no problem to move RJ and Jameelah back into the same room for a few weeks; might even be good for Jameelah to have her brother nearby. She's been having some nightmares, and RJ would love nothing more than to serve as a sort of living teddy bear for his adored big sister to cuddle with.

With characteristic stubbornness, Clay insists on trying to walk from the car to the house. "Unlike last time, there's not a damn thing wrong with my legs," he points out, snappishly enough to indicate that it's probably time for his next dose of pain medication.

That resolve lasts right up until they get him up on his feet, his knees immediately buckle, and he is forced to face the uncomfortable reality of exactly how weak he still is. Jason and Trent end up pretty much carrying him inside and depositing him on the couch, where he sits with his eyes closed, pale and sweating, too miserable to say anything more.

The day Clay is released from the hospital also happens to be Jameelah's second day back at school.

When she came home after the first day, she said everything had gone fine, but was unusually quiet and subdued all evening. Ray had to keep deliberately clamping his mouth shut to keep himself from pressing the issue, because it was pretty clear she wasn't ready to talk about it yet, and the therapist had told them to try to be patient and let Jameelah be the one to initiate those conversations as much as possible.

Their little girl survived a terrifying situation in which she had very little control, and that leaves a mark, even on a child who's not quite 10. Whenever they can, the therapist said, they need to try to give Jameelah a sense of autonomy.

The one thing Ray and Naima have both told her unprompted, multiple times a day, is how proud they are that she got herself out of that situation. When they heard the full story, about how Jameelah figured out how to take off the doorknob so she could escape from the basement, Ray thought he might explode with pride.

Of all the things he's experienced in his life, this is one of the most incredible to him: watching his babies turn into _people._

It seems like yesterday that Jameelah was frighteningly small, the curve of her tiny skull fitting in his palm with space left over, her rib cage fluttering with rapid butterfly breaths - and now, not even 10 years later, she's smart and fierce and brave, a child strong enough to rescue herself from an abduction.

After getting Spenser dosed up on pain meds and settled in under the watchful care of his teammates and Naima, Ray goes to pick up Jameelah, who isn't quite ready to brave the bus just yet. On the way home, his daughter shows off a new rainbow rubber-band bracelet that her best friend gave her, but is otherwise quiet again.

That solemn demeanor lasts right up until they get home and she walks through the door and lays eyes on Clay.

Jameelah breaks into an incandescent smile, starts forward, then quickly stops herself. "Hi, Uncle Clay."

Spenser's smile matches hers in brightness. "Hey, Jammie." His voice sounds less pained, if a bit slurred at the edges. The meds must have kicked in.

Jameelah stays back, twisting her fingers together. "I know I hafta be careful because you're hurt," she says tentatively. "But is a hug... would a hug be okay?"

"I would _love_ a hug," Clay tells her sincerely.

Under Naima's direction, Jameelah climbs up on the couch next to him and carefully snuggles up against his side, beneath his arm.

They sit like that for a while. Ray thinks they both look more relaxed than they have since before this entire fiasco happened.

But maybe that's partly just the pain medication for Spenser, because he ends up passing out right there, still sitting up, head tilted back. Jameelah giggles quietly when he starts to snore.

Having Spenser there means the Perry home is now automatically the preferred gathering place for all of Bravo. Sonny in particular hangs around as much as possible. He gives Clay shit about getting taken down by a paltry little .22, at which point Spenser politely offers to shoot him in the chest with one at close range, make him hike several miles through the woods in a storm afterward and then go without treatment for four days, and see how _he_ likes it.

Clay has been home from the hospital for four days when the manhunt for the kid who shot him comes to an abrupt and somewhat anticlimactic end: the teenager walks into a police station in rural Montana and turns himself in.

Apparently his mom had sent him out there to take refuge with an old friend of his father's, intending to later follow with her younger son, but the kid ultimately chose to give himself up rather than live in fear.

Knowing he's in custody eases Ray's nerves at least a little. It feels like some sort of closure, probably the best they're going to get. He's expecting a similar reaction from Spenser, but instead Clay looks... unsettled. His eyes go shifty, and after a minute he asks, "What do you think will happen to him?"

Ray takes a few seconds to pinpoint the emotion his teammate is attempting to hide. "You're not feeling _sorry_ for him, are you?" He can't quite keep the incredulousness out of his voice.

Clay gives the tiniest of shrugs, even that small motion causing a wince. After another brief hesitation, he admits, "I don't know. It's just... he's a kid, Ray. Fifteen years old. Dumb as hell, but didn't even mean to pull that trigger. And he got dealt one hell of a shitty hand in life, you know?"

"Listen, man, I didn't ever get to know your friend Armstrong as well as I would have liked to, but from what you've told me, it sounds like he got dealt a pretty shitty hand too." Ray pauses. "I know it sucks, and it can make things a hell of a lot harder, but in the end, we all get to decide what we do with the hand we're dealt. Like Brian did."

Clay hitches a small, sad smile. "Brian was a friggin' _miracle,_ Ray. Not everybody can be him."

"Maybe not, but not everybody ends up shooting someone, either."

Spenser quirks his mouth noncommittally. He doesn't look quite settled, but he lets it go.

It feels damn near miraculous that the brass managed to keep Ray and Spenser's true job description out of the news, but somehow they did. After the resolution is reported, the media narrative surrounding Clay and Jameelah's disappearance and subsequent rescue soon shifts to topics like the collateral damage of the war on drugs, and whether marijuana should be decriminalized in the state of Virginia, and whether the boy who pulled the trigger should be charged as an adult.

It blows over. Even Ash Spenser surprisingly keeps his mouth firmly shut on the subject.

Ray has a feeling the man might have had some outside assistance in making that choice - and he _knows_ Ash had some outside assistance in making the wise decision to stay away from his son while Clay heals.

(Turns out Eric Blackburn can be surprisingly terrifying when he really wants to be.)

A few days after the capture of the teenager who shot Spenser, Jameelah finally initiates a conversation with Clay about what happened to them, and Ray happens to be nearby to overhear it.

Clay and Jameelah are on the couch again, watching a movie with the volume turned low, when Jameelah says suddenly, "You got hurt because of me. We were only out there because I wanted to get the wildflowers."

Ray winces. They've tried so hard to get through to her, but she just keeps circling back around to this misplaced sense of guilt. With effort, he manages to keep quiet, waiting to see how Spenser will handle it.

Clay immediately gives an emphatic shake of his head. "No, kiddo. No, no. It was my job to keep you safe, and I would never have taken you out there if I'd thought there was any danger. Neither of us had any way of knowing what would happen, and we should have been safe there. We only weren't because that family made some really bad choices, and those choices are their responsibility, not yours or mine. Do you understand?"

Slowly, she nods, tucking her head against his shoulder.

"None of the bad stuff is your fault. But what you _are_ responsible for is me being alive right now." Clay plants a careful kiss on the top of her head. "You know that, right, Jammie Dodger? You being brave enough and smart enough to break out of that basement and go call your dad, that saved my life. You're a frickin' hero."

Ray doesn't really love the idea of his daughter getting in the habit of using words like _frickin',_ but there's no way he can actually complain about it right now. Not after he sees the way Jameelah reacts, first with a sort of shy skepticism as she glances up at Clay's face to gauge his sincerity, and then with dawning awe and delight that drives her to bury her face in his shirt again to hide her luminous smile.

Clay quickly covers his flinch of pain with an eye-crinkling grin, lacing his arm around Jameelah's shoulders. They sit like that for a while, quiet and content, half paying attention to _Incredibles 2_ playing on the TV in front of them, and Ray just watches.

It's the best evening he has had in ages.

The next one turns out to be a lot harder, because it's when Clay finally asks The Question.

Ray and Naima have suspected all along that it would happen eventually, but the fact that it's taken this long has lulled Ray into a false sense of security. It's made him hope that maybe Spenser just won't ever get around to mentioning those assumptions that got made while he and Jameelah were missing.

No such luck.

When it happens, the children and Naima are in bed, the other members of Bravo are at their own respective homes for once, and Ray and Spenser are sitting in the living room, Ray having just fetched a snack for Clay to take his medication with.

Spenser stares intently down at the coffee table, taking slow breaths like he does when he's trying to muster the courage to say something heavy.

Ray has a pretty good idea what's coming, and he's seized by a sudden urge to break the silence before Clay gets up the nerve to talk. To distract, deflect to something light-hearted, and put it off for one more day.

He forces himself to stay quiet and wait out the tense silence. He owes Spenser this.

"Look," Clay says finally. "Maybe this isn't even fair to ask, but I just... I guess I need to know." He raises his gaze. "When the police thought it was me, that I'd... done something to hurt Jameelah, did y'all believe them? You and Naima?"

Ray hesitates. He's known that this moment would come, but now that it's here, he finds himself mentally scrambling for the right answer. He feels like he's balancing on the edge of a knife. One wrong move could not only damage his and Clay's friendship, but potentially even impact Bravo's team dynamics and their ability to trust each other in the field.

Unfortunately, his silence apparently lasts too long, and says enough all on its own.

Shoulders hunching, Spenser quickly tucks his head all the way down to hide his expression. Folding in on himself, he lets out a shaky breath. "Okay. Yeah. Okay, that's..."

He sounds like he's trying to _not_ sound devastated, but not managing it very well.

He sounds a bit like a child who's been told he's going to be sent away, a child who's been made to believe that nothing about him will ever be good enough, and Ray's chest aches like _he_ is the one with the fractured sternum.

Spenser's desperation to prove himself, his arrogance and aggressiveness in needing to be the best, still rankle sometimes, but Ray long since figured out where a lot of that behavior comes from. The Clay he's looking at right now is the kid who is still afraid, deep down, that everyone he cares about will one day find a reason to ditch him.

"Not really," Ray says. "We didn't really believe it. We did wonder. I wish I could tell you we didn't, but we did. It was... we were so scared, man. Weren't thinking straight. But even so, we chose to hang onto faith for as long as we could."

It isn't good enough. He knows it isn't. But it's all he has.

Still looking down, Clay nods slowly. "Yeah," he says, quiet and almost toneless. "I get it. I mean, y'all must have been absolutely out of your minds with fear. And from an objective standpoint, I guess it looked pretty damn bad with the traffic cam photo and everything, since I hadn't told you exactly where I was taking her." Raising his face a bit, he gives a wry, sad little smile. "Not a mistake I'll make a second time. I mean, if y'all are ever crazy enough to let me hang out with your kids like that again." Clay's voice wobbles on that final sentence, and Ray's heart breaks a little.

"Spense. You are our _family,_ okay?" When Spenser finally looks him in the eyes, Ray adds, "Also, Jameelah might literally kill us if we tried to tell her she couldn't hang out with you anymore." He smiles, soft and fond. "She hasn't forgotten about the whole flower chain thing. You're still on the hook for that."

Clay huffs a laugh, then goes pale, bracing his arm lightly against his chest. Ray is pretty sure the tears in his eyes aren't just from the pain.

Ray takes a deep breath and says, because it needs to be said, "Clay, I am sorry. I'm sorry that I ever doubted you. After all this time, everything we've been through together, I should have known better."

Spenser nods again, but his gaze flickers to the right, not quite settling on Ray's face. He says, "I get it. I do. Honestly, y'all probably shouldn't be held responsible for much of anything you might have thought while Jam was missing. I can't even imagine what that must have been like."

Spenser may be telling the truth that, on an intellectual level, he understands Ray and Naima's mental state after Jameelah's disappearance and doesn't hold their doubts against them. But Ray is pretty sure that doesn't erase the emotional impact Clay feels from hearing that his teammate, his _brother,_ could have even briefly believed him capable of deliberately harming an innocent child who loved him.

Spenser already has an entire catalog of abandonment and trust issues; Ray knows from experience that this could easily snowball. They'll need to keep a close eye on him, reinforce again and again that he is trusted and loved, try not to let him withdraw.

Ray figures the best time to start on that is now.

"Jameelah told us, brother. That you took that bullet while shielding her." He pauses, uncertain how Clay feels about this next part, but wanting Spenser to know that they understand what he did for their daughter. All of it. "She told us that you were begging for her life, not yours, while you bled out on the ground. That is a debt that I can _never_ repay. You understand that?"

"You don't owe me a damn thing, Ray," Spenser says softly.

"Yeah, I do." Ray hopes the strength of his conviction is clear in his voice.

Looking back now on the doubts he had, the emotion he feels isn't exactly guilt; he knows he was trapped inside a parent's worst nightmare, and that logical thinking was all but impossible while he and Naima were drowning in that choking, all-encompassing terror.

What he _does_ feel is regret that it happened. That Spenser knows it did.

Beneath that regret lies determination to fight however hard he has to to keep this from creating a rift the team might not be able to come back from.

During those long, awful days without his daughter, Ray couldn't stop himself from obsessively going back, over and over, through every memory he could dredge up from the almost three years he's known Clay Spenser.

The first time he'd caught sight of that cocky smirk and head of curly blond hair when the new Green Team boys arrived.

How persistently he'd tried to convince a very reluctant Jason that the Spenser kid, his parentage and overconfidence issues aside, was the one they should draft.

Ray spent those four days without Jameelah wondering if the choice to push for Spenser was the single biggest mistake he would ever make. Turns out it was pretty much the exact opposite.

Ray and Spenser's relationship has always included its fair share of tension; between Clay's sometimes ruthless ambition and his status as a gifted sniper, there was conflict built in almost from day one. That doesn't change the fact that Ray cares about the kid, trusts him with his life, and has incredibly high hopes for his future.

Clay fought for Jameelah's life while he was injured and close to bleeding out.

Ray will fight just as hard to save their friendship, to keep his teammate from spinning out, self-sabotaging and disappearing into his own head.

It's the least he can do.

Silence stretches between them. Ray gets up from the recliner and starts to go sit next to Clay, but hesitates.

The thing about Spenser is that he's actually a pretty physically affectionate person. Oh, he often tries to downplay it, but Ray notices things. The frequent casual shoulder pats; the way Clay settles in and looks all happy and contented when the team is crammed together on a helo; the way he sometimes leans into 'bro hugs' for just a second too long before pulling himself away.

Part of that might just be a natural inclination, but Ray figures at least some of it probably stems from an early childhood that contained far too few hugs - and doesn't that just hurt like hell, the thought of a tiny, big-eyed Clay, so much smaller even than Jameelah is now, being starved of affection.

Ray just isn't sure if now is the right time. If Clay is ready to accept any form of comfort, or if he wants to pull away like he often does when he's struggling.

So Ray offers, but doesn't push it. He sits down, holds his arm out, but leaves enough space between them that it's Clay's choice whether to bridge the gap.

It takes a minute, but finally, with a soft sigh, Spenser leans in. Ray wraps his arms around him, careful of the injured chest, and tells him quietly, "You're good, brother. We got you."

And they do. For however long he needs.

* * *

All that's left now is the epilogue to wrap things up. I hope to have that posted by early next week.


	9. Together Among the Ten Thousand Things

**9\. Together Among the Ten Thousand Things**

It ends up being _weeks_ before Jameelah finally learns to make flower chains.

Uncle Clay has to stay in the hospital for a while. That bothers Jameelah a lot because she wants to see him, but the hospital won't let her because she isn't old enough.

She misses Uncle Clay all the time. Sometimes she has awful dreams where he dies, where he's bleeding and she throws her arms around his neck but then suddenly there's nothing there to hold onto. After she wakes up from those, she always misses him even more.

At first Jameelah doesn't really want to tell her parents about how scared she was or about how she still has bad dreams, because she's afraid of making them more sad. She knows that it hurts them to think about what happened and how they couldn't help her or protect her while she was gone, and she doesn't want to hurt them any more.

It's good to have the therapist lady to talk to, because while the therapist lady is really nice, she doesn't seem to get sad when Jameelah tells her about hiding in the bathroom and sleeping in the bathtub, or about waking up crying from dreams where Uncle Clay bleeds and then disappears. The therapist just listens and is very calm about everything, and she knows ways to help Jameelah feel better and less scared.

The therapist tells Jameelah that she thinks it's a good idea for her to tell her parents these things too, but only when she feels ready. Jameelah likes that, that it's her decision and nobody is making her say things she doesn't want to.

She stays home from school for a while, but she wants to see her friends and doesn't like missing so many classes, so she goes back the day before Uncle Clay comes home from the hospital.

It doesn't take long for Jameelah to realize that things at school have changed. She gets a lot of attention now. It isn't the good kind of attention, like when it's your birthday and everybody smiles at you and your friends give you little gifts. Instead, it feels like nobody knows what to say to her. Like they're all staring at her whenever she isn't looking at them. Like they expect her to be different now than she was before, and she doesn't _want_ to be different. She just wants to be Jameelah, like she's always been.

She goes home and tells her parents that things went fine, because really they did. Nobody was mean to her or anything. People were almost _too_ nice. She doesn't know why she wants to cry anyway.

The next day goes pretty much the same, except that her best friend gives her a new bracelet, and when she gets home from school, Uncle Clay is there at her house. That makes her feel better.

RJ moves into her room while Uncle Clay is there, and even though Jameelah sighs and rolls her eyes a little when they tell her about it, she doesn't actually mind. Some of her friends complain about their little brothers and sisters, but RJ loves Jameelah more than almost anything in the world, and he's mostly really sweet. He likes to cuddle and he doesn't kick in his sleep or anything. Somehow having him there seems to help Jameelah sleep better, with fewer bad dreams.

She makes herself keep going to school, and slowly things do get better, just like the therapist lady promised her they would. Everyone eventually seems to realize that Jameelah is still herself. After a few weeks, near the end of the semester, a fifth-grade boy's baby sister gets diagnosed with some sort of really bad cancer. The boy's name is Evan. Most of the other students are kind of sad and awkward around him, and it seems to distract them from being sad and awkward with Jameelah.

She doesn't know Evan very well, but she feels really bad for him. What happened to her and Uncle Clay wasn't good, but at least they both lived. She can't imagine how much worse she'd feel if RJ was sick, and she had to go around all day at school solving math problems and acting normal while being scared that he might die.

At lunch, she plops down right next to Evan and tries to talk to him normally, like he's still just himself. She talks about Minecraft (because he's wearing a shirt that has a creeper on it), and what classes he's in, and if they're hard. When they're mostly done eating, she gives Evan her cookie and tells him she hopes his sister will get better. His face scrunches up a little like he might cry, but then he just says real quiet, "Thank you."

After school lets out for the summer, Uncle Clay, who is feeling a lot better but still isn't quite ready to move back to his own apartment, brings up the flowers again.

"I know we missed Mother's Day," he says, "but we can still make up for it, right?"

Jameelah suddenly realizes she isn't sure she even wants to learn anymore. Every time she thinks about the flowers, she just gets a sick feeling in her stomach. It feels all tangled up with the bad things that happened, and she doesn't know how to untangle it.

"I think maybe I'll just figure out a different present for Mama, if that's okay," she finally replies in a small voice, looking down at her hands twisted together in her lap.

"Of course it's okay, if that's what you want." Uncle Clay's voice is very gentle. "But if you decide you still want to learn, I'll be happy to teach you. Everybody wants to come along this time, your dad and Uncle Jason and Trent and Brock and Sonny. Your mom will have _so many_ flower crowns by the time we're done."

Jameelah hesitates, because she kind of _does_ want that. She wants to spend a day with her uncles making flower crowns, but part of her is still scared too, like she thinks something will go wrong even with all of them there.

Uncle Clay gives her a hug. He says softly, "When I was little, quite a bit younger than you are right now, I used to make daisy chains for my mom. She was... really sick, and for some reason I thought it might make her better." He smiles, but it's a sad smile, not a happy one. "Guess that was pretty dumb of me."

Jameelah's throat hurts and she doesn't even know why. "I don't think you were dumb," she tells him fiercely.

He looks at her, his eyes all shiny and bright. "Thanks, kiddo." He clears his throat. "Anyway, my mom didn't ever get better, and for a while I didn't even like to think about the flowers. They just made me sad. But when I moved to Africa to live with my grandparents, I made a lot of new friends there, and it turned out that they liked having crowns made out of flowers and vines, so I started doing it again. And those are good memories, mostly."

He pauses for a minute before continuing, "I guess what I'm trying to say is, all of us have bad things in our lives. Hard things we don't necessarily like to remember. But there are a lot of good things too, and I think it's important, if we can, to try not to let the hard times ruin those or take them away from us. Do you know what I mean?"

Jameelah thinks about that. "I think so," she says.

"Okay. Good." Carefully, with a little wince, he reaches out and ruffles her hair. "It's your call, Jammie Dodger. What do you want to do?"

Jameelah takes a deep breath and chooses to be brave.

She broke out of that basement and saved Uncle Clay's life. She's a frickin' hero. She can do this. It will be easy.

"Okay," she says. "Let's do it."

It turns out that Uncle Eric knows someone nearby who owns a lot of land, so that's where they go. They end up in a field full of black-eyed Susans and white clover and tiny daisies, with some pretty red columbine growing near a stream at the edge of the field.

Uncle Clay can walk by himself just fine now, but he is still very careful in the way that he moves. "Stop hovering," he tells Uncle Trent, who says "I'm not hovering" while hovering right beside Uncle Clay with his hands halfway out to catch him if he should trip and fall.

They pick a spot to sit in the grass, and then Uncle Sonny and Uncle Brock get chosen to go gather some of each kind of flower for everyone. Uncle Sonny complains, but Uncle Brock just smiles and takes off, Cerberus right at his heels.

Once the flowers are all ready, Uncle Clay starts showing everybody how to make the braided crowns. He is very patient, especially with Jameelah. Uncle Sonny teases him a lot about knowing how to do this, and Uncle Clay just smiles nicely at him and promises to braid many flowers into his beard the next time he falls asleep. Finally, Uncle Sonny rolls his eyes, says, "Oh, what the hell," and sits down and joins in. He's not very good at it, but he tries.

When Jameelah finally manages to make a perfect crown, something pretty and spiky that looks like a fairy warrior queen would wear it, her whole chest feels warm from the inside. She looks around at her dad and all her big, tough uncles, every one of them focused on the piles of flowers in their laps. She looks past them at Cerberus, who is rolling wildly in the grass with his tongue hanging out and all four paws in the air.

Jameelah holds her ring of flowers up to the sky so that it crowns the sun, and she smiles.

* * *

Well, we've finally come to the end of what is officially the longest fic I've ever written! Many thanks for all the support and kindness, and I wish a happy holiday season to all who celebrate.


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